
Ssliotypel^inling Co. 



Sccbrood-jPlufto. 




C^^hZ-v^ 



REMINISCENCES 



OF 



A JOURNALIST 



BY 



/ 



CHARLES T. COJjIGDON 



"At mihi cura 
Non mediocris inest, fontes ut adire remotos, 
Atque haurire queamvitae praecepta beatae." 

HoR. Sat. II. 4. 93-g5. 



■0^ ^ 




BOSTON 2 '' 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 

1880 



TT 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Introduction ^ 

CHAPTER I. 

THE FIRST DECADE. 

A Newspaper Office of the Olden Time.— A Whaling 
Port Fifty Years ago. — Tlie Colored Population.— 
Stories of the Old Quakers 9 

CHAPTER II. 

THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED. 

Advertising in the Old Day. — Amusements. — Political 
Controversies. — Democrats and Federalists. — The 
Election of John Quincy Adams. — John Adams and 
Franklin. — The Anti-masonic Excitement. — William 
CuUen Bryant. — Early Reading. — Ralph Waldo 
Emerson 



22 



CHAPTER III. 

MEETIXG-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 

The Rev. Orville Dewey. —A Pulpit Plagiarist. — The 
Negro Pew. — Colorphobia in School. — Ephraim Pea- 
hody. — John H. Morrison. — John Weiss. — Dr. John 
O. Choules. — Dr. Channing. — A Preacher who could n't 
be stopped. — John Newland Maffit. — Dr. Samuel 
West. — John Pierpont 36 



Vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 

The Old Public Schools. — The Days of the Rod. — An 
Old Schoolmate. — Joseph Lancaster. — Daniel Webster 
in Court. — Wendell Phillips in Early Life. — The Days 
of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren. — The Massa- 
chusetts Democracy. — The Rich and Poor. — Dr. 
Orestes A. Brownson. — George Bancroft 50 

CHAPTER V. 

OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 

Tiie Whig Party previous to 1840. — Methods and Dis- 
cipline of the Democratic Party. — Amos Kendall's 
Circular. — Richard Haughton. — The Boston Atlas and 
Mr. Webster. — The Beginning of Henry Wilson's 
Political Career. — Edward Everett. — Alexander H. 
Everett, — Rufus Choate 65 

CHAPTER VI. 

WIIIGS, REPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 

The Campaign of 1840. — General Harrison and John 
Tyler. — Mr. Webster in the Tyler Cabinet. — Caleb 
Gushing. — Fletcher Webster. — Robert C. Wiuthrop . 78 

CHAPTER VII. 

UNIVERSITY DAYS. 

An Episode of Student Life. — Dr. Francis Wayland. — 
The Old Curriculum. — Dr. Horatio B. Hackett. — Pro- 
fessor Romeo Elton. — Governor William Gaston. — 
Mr. Justice Bradley. — The Old Familiar Faces. — 
College Manners then and now 91 



CONTENTS. VU 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GUEAT DORR WAR. 

State of Affairs previous to the Rebellion. — Tlie Origin 
of tlie People's Constitution. — Dr. John A. Brown. — 
"Governor" Dorr. — The Old Rhode Island Bar. — 
General Tiioinas F. Carpenter. — Interference of Dem- 
ocratic Governors 103 

CHAPTER IX. 

LITERARY MEMORIES. 

Literary Characteristics. — The Transcendental Period. — 
Influence of Carlyle. — Margaret Fuller. — Sarah 
Helen Whitman. — Henry Giles. — Literary Remuner- 
ation 116 

CHAPTER X. 

THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 

Old Antislavery Feeling. — A Musical I\rob. — The Nom- 
ination of Taylor and C;i^s. — The Free-soil Party. — 
The Massachusetts Coalition — Henry Wilson. — 
Abbott Lawrence. — Benjamin F. Hallett. — The Fugi- 
tive Slave Law. — Horace Mann 128 

CHAPTER XL 

OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 

The Know-Nothing Movement in Massachusetts — Gover- 
nor Gardner. — Mr. Wilson's Election to the Senate. 
— Free Soilers, Republicans, and Coalitionists. — An- 
son Burlingame. — Nathaniel P. Banks. — Francis W. 
Bird. — Governor John A. Andrew 112 



viii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 

Charles Sumner. — William H Seward. — The Boston 
Conservatives. — George S. Hillard. — Frederick Doug- 
lass and the Garrisonians 158 



CHAPTER Xm. 

A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 

The Stage Forty Years ago and Now. — Clara Fisher. — 
William F. Gates — Thomas Hamblin, — A Heavy 
Villain. — The Old Tragic Actresses. — Mrs. Sloman, 
— The Elder Booth 174 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 

Ellen Tree. — Charles Kean. — A Memory of Talfourd's 
"Ion." — Edwin Forrest. — Anecdotes of that Tra- 
gedian. —Public Manias. — Fai^ny Elssler. — Ole Bull. 
— Jenny Lind 187 



CHAPTER XV. 

A GOSSIP OF POLITICS. 

The Men of the Caucuses. — The Death of Daniel Webster. 

— Characteristics of that Orator and Statesman. — ^ 
Theodore Parker. — His Humanity and Natural Re- 
ligion. — The Hard Fate of a Newspaper and its Editor. 

— The Fremont Campaign. — An Active Member of the 
Party 200 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XVI. 

HORACE GREELEY. 

Coming to New York. — Misrepresentations of Mr. Greeley. 

— His Personal Opinions apart from Politics. — His 
Love of Right and Truth. — People who annoyed him. 

— His Journalistic Characteristics. — His Plain Speech 
and Wit and Humor. — The Presidential Canvass. — 

Mr. Greeley's Death 215 

CHAPTER XYH. 

OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES. 

Mr. Greeley again. — His Editorial Methods. — His Mem- 
ory of what pleased him. — Richard Hildreth, — Wil- 
liam H. Fry. — The Count Gurowski. — Dr. George 
Ripley 229 

CHAPTER XVni. 

CONTRIBUTORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 

Requirements of Journalism. — Bayard Taylor. — His Boy- 
ish Resolution and Early Travel. — His Letters to the 
Tribune. -^ His Literary Taste and Latest Work. — 
Robert Carter. — A Man of Facts. — Edmimd Quincy. 

— The Tribune and the Draft Riots of 1863 .... 240 

CHAPTER XIX. 

OLLA PODRIDA. 

Progress of Antislavery Agitation, — A Great Historic 
Period. — Newspapers before that Time. — The Miller 
Excitement. — Garroting in New York in 1857. — The 
Burdell Murder. — Things which have had Runs. — 
The First Dress Reform. — Cheap Books and News- 
papers 252 



CONTRACTS. 



CHAPTER XX. 

A LAST " TRIBUNE " RECOLLECTION. 

The Private History of a Newspaper. — Methods and 
Mistakes. — Domestic Critics. — " Tom " Rooker. — 
Good Copy and Bad. — Bidding the Old Office Farewell. 

— The Yomig Poets. — Mr. E. C. Stedman. — The 
Diamond Wedding. — Newspaper Correspondence, Past 

and Present 265 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS BILL. 

A Sensitive Statesman. — Dr. Nathan Lord and his School. 

— An Apology for Pro-Slavery Clergymen. — First 
Visit to Washington. — First Impressions of Slavery. — 
A Greek Letter Anniversary. — Augustus Cjesar 
Dodge. — Stephen A. Douglas. — Thomas D. Eliot. — 
Professor Henry 278 

CHAPTER XXIL 

OLD TIMES AND TRAITS. 

New York half a Century since. — An Old New .England 
Town. — My First Tragedy. — Social Characteristics. 

— Stage Coach Travelhng. — Ancient Amusements. — 

A Fine Old Lady 292 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

MORE NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 

Errors and their Correctors. — Private Sensitiveness. — 
The Man who wants to run for Congress. — Actors and 
Actresses. — The Abominable Devices-. — Feats of Ex- 
temporaneous Production. — A Great Critic and Jour- 
nalist 307 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 

Training for Journalism. — Tlie Office the Best School. — 
Wasted Opportunities. — What a Keal Newspaper is. 
The Old Editors. — The llewards of Journalism. — Its 
Associations and Dignity 322 

CHAPTER XXV. 

NEWSPAPER PERILS. 

Bohemianism. — The Pleasure and the Penalty. — The 
King of the Bohemians. — A Brilliant Dramatic Critic. 
— Three Jolly Painters. — Comic Newspapers and their 
Doleful Fate. — A Plenty of Good Advice gratis ... 335 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 

The Beginnings of American Literature. — The Author of 
"Old Grimes." — Mr. Kettell's "Specimens." — The 
Aspirations of Boyhood. — Mr. N. P. Willis. — Early 
American Book Manufacture. — A Story with a Moral. 348 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

BOOK COLLECTING. 

The First Old Book. — Charms of Ancient Volumes. — 
Scholarship of the Old Writers. — Aldus, Froben, 
Schccffer, Elzevir. — Prizes in the Lottery. — Annotated 
Books and Books with Autographs. — The Solace of 
Reading 3G3 



xn CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

VALEDICTORY. 

The Fascinations of Journalism. — The Choice of a Profes- 
sion. — Newspaper Work as a CalUng. — A Word for 
my Correspondents. — Tlie Men of the Past. — The 
Perpetuity of the Republic. -- The Last Greeting . . 376 

Index 387 



I 



INTRODUCTION. 



T was long ago observed that if the ohscurest 
person would but write his life with perfect 
freedom and a sturdy veracity, the book, in spite of 
the mediocrity of the author's career or talents, could 
hardly be dull. We are all men together, liking to 
learn each other's foibles, to get away from the weari- 
some task of minding our own business, and to enjoy 
the feminine satisfaction of acquiring each other's 
secrets. Autobiography occupies a distinct position 
in the literature of all languages, yet our English 
tongue can hardly be regarded as rich in it. It is 
the religious people who have chiefly made the world 
their confidants, and among the religious people, 
mainly the Methodists and the Quakers, with now 
and then a contribution from the Presbyterian quar- 
ter of dissent. These books, of which I have read 
many with a peculiar pleasure, have usually the 
beauty of perfect candor and the race of complete 
self-knowledge. This has rendered graceful and 
winning the autobiographies of extremely illiterate 
persons. It has found an immortal expression in 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

"The Pilgrim's Progress" and in the Diary, less 
generally known, of George Pox, the proto-Quaker. 
The last work drew from Sir James Mackintosh 
words of praise which, to cooler minds, may seem a 
little exaggerated. But there is something delightful 
about all the Quaker autobiographies. Charles Lamb 
felt their charm, and was never weary of reading 
and of praising them. Their frankness is their fas- 
cination. For there can be nothino- more enoaoin^: 
than a fresh and unstudied narration of religious 
experience, the abandon of conscientious veracity, 
the unadorned history of an individual soul, in 
its rise from the depths of despair to the exalted 
regions of an unquestioning faith ; and a man who, 
by the nature of his intellectual constitution, is 
doomed always to grope in the twilight of a lonely 
scepticism, may well envy these costly consolations 
of the poor, the unlettered, and the despised. The 
Quakers, believing in immediate and personal reve- 
lation, thought nothing, in writing of themselves, too 
mean to be recorded, nothing too insignificant to be 
set down. One of the most charming of these 
Quaker autobiographies is that of Thomas Elwood. 
Honest John Whitehead, who supervised its publi- 
cation after Elwood's death, begins his Preface with 
the Scriptural quotation, " Gather up the fragments 
that remain, that nothing be lost." I do not know 
that the title-page of any autobiography could be 
garnished with a more appropriate motto. 

It may be said, to the credit of human nature, 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

which sorely needs all the credit to which it is en- 
titled, that most autobiographies are thoroughly can- 
did, and bear upon their pages the golden stamp of 
unflinching truth. Somebody said of the memoirs 
of actors and of actresses, that their autobiographies 
only were to be trusted because they alone, of all 
who indulged in such confessions, had bidden farewell 
to respectability. The observation is neither good- 
natured nor strictly true. A writer of philosophical 
instincts probably feels that if the work is to be 
done at all, it should be done accurately and with- 
out squeamish reserve ; that truth is not alone the 
best, but the only policy ; that to make a clean breast 
of it will put him most nearly right in the court of 
posterity. Moreover, without some detail of his 
shortcoming's he will find no natural and lop^ical 
footing for his extenuations. Lacking the complet- 
est candor, the book has no excuse for being, and is 
no more than a literary impertinence. It is for this 
reason that we pardon the naked and sometimes 
disagreeable frankness of Eousseau. The " Memoirs 
of Dr. Franklin," dishonestly expurgated as they were 
upon their first appearance, even then contained 
evidence of strict sincerity and judicial impartiality. 
It was as if we had been admitted to a friendly con- 
versation with that admirable ornament of his race. 
The fragment left by Gibbon relates mainly to his 
studies, their wide scope and scholarly method ; but 
it must be remembered that his studies were the 
main business of the most erudite of historians, whose 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

large scholarship stands all possible tests, and aston- 
ishes all his commentators by its scrupulous accuracy 
in the obscurest and minutest details. The autobi- 
ography of Goethe, I fancy, has been more talked of 
than read, at least in the English language. Most 
find it a rather dull piece of auto-anatomy, the less 
needed because the personality of the man is so thor- 
oughly exhibited in all his prose and. in all his 
verse. The book, however, maintains the general 
rule of candor. So does the sketch of his early life, 
written by William Gifford, the editor of the " London 
Quarterly Eeview," — an affecting narrative of youth- 
ful difficulties and of a childhood clouded by the 
most abject poverty. This truculent critic, who has 
(most unjustly) the bad reputation of killing poor 
John Keats, writes of himself, as most men do, with 
a considerable grace. One thing may be said to his 
honor. He was often taunted with his apprentice- 
ship to a cobbler in boyhood ; but he gives a full 
account of his shoemaking, and of how he w^orked 
out mathematical and algebraical problems upon 
waste scraps of leather with his awl. It was labor 
lost, to quote against him the hackneyed, Ne sutor 
ultra crepidam. 

But of all candid autobiographers, commend me 
to George Bubb Dodington (Baron of Melcombe 
Regis). The world has had a plenty of politicians 
who have been patriotic for a price and served their 
country with a single eye to self-interest, but not 
many of them have kept a diary of their own degra- 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

dation and left it for publication. Dodington's 
political career was one of perpetual " ratting." The 
curiosity of the matter is, not that he was vain, self- 
ish, and avaricious, but that he does not seem to 
understand that such qualities of character are other 
than creditable. He was first in the service of 
George II. He deserted his old master from 
motives which, however mercenary, he is not 
ashamed to detail, accepting the protection of Fred- 
erick, Prince of Wales. It is pleasant to know that 
in that minor court he was neglected, discontented, 
and miserable. When Prince Frederick died, he 
went over to the Pelhams, and turned his broad 
back upon his constant friend and patroness, the 
princess dowager. I do not believe that there is a 
more shameless book than his diary in any language, 
dead or living. The MS. was bequeathed to his 
cousin, Thomas Wyndham, who was ashamed to 
print it, and left it to Henry Penruddocke Wynd- 
ham, who had no such scruples. He put forth 
this record of servility and utter selfishness, but 
through the whole preface he sneered at the writer 
of it, and he placed upon the title-page the quota- 
tion from Ptabelais, " Et tout pour la trippe," which 
he translated " And all for quarter-day ! " The book 
is curious, but it is not a pleasant one to read, — not 
quite so agreeable, I think, as the Newgate Calen- 
dar, that rich repertory of Last Dying Speeches 
and Confessions, for these, in comparison, give one 
rather an elevated idea of human nature. 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

Far be it from me to undertake anything like 
a general review of autobiography, though the pref- 
aces of worthless books are often amusing and 
profitable to read, as I hope this may be. Cumber- 
land, the Bit Fretful Plagianj of Sheridan's " Critic," 
has left a most diverting account of the production 
of plays which are now, for the most part, forgotten, 
and of a life which was of no particular value to 
the world; nor can I help thinking here of what 
Charles Lamb said of Bishop Burnet's History, — 
'' quite the prattle of outlived importance." The 
same thing might be said of the following pages if 
the writer had ever been of any importance at all. 
If an apology for this book be necessary, the remi- 
niscent may be permitted to plead that he was first 
persuaded, much against his own inclination, into 
writing the original for The Tribune newspaper, 
and that he is now, in a manner, betrayed into its 
publication in the present form, through the too 
good-natured suggestions of his publisher. Politi- 
cally, the period which it covers has been one of 
great interest and importance, and it has been neces- 
sary for the writer constantly to watch public affairs 
and public men. He has also witnessed many social 
changes, most of them, as he is glad to believe, for 
the better. During the half-century which these 
chapters cover, there has been a wonderful progress, 
both moral and material. Surely, it is something to 
have lived in such historic times, and to have been 
brought into intimate relation with many of the 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

most important of their vicissitudes. The journalist 
is compelled to vigilance, and to a constant estimate 
of men and measures. So far as the reminiscent is 
concerned, the drama is nearly over now ; and if it 
were not, he has lost something of his interest in 
it. One who has discussed such mortal and momen- 
tous issues does not take kindly to the squabbles 
of politicians, nor care much for the distribution of 
the spolia opima, or even for the minor booty of a 
President's election. He only begs that the reader 
will civilly regard this little book as he would the 
chat of a talkative old gentleman, sitting in slip- 
pered ease by the fireside, and insisting upon hav- 
ing rather more than his share of the conversation. 
There is, indeed, a difference : nobody is compelled 
to read the book ; sometimes, alas ! those who are 
not in the least entertained are obliged to listen. 



REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FIRST DECADE. 

A Newspaper Office of the Olden Time, — A Whalino 
Port Fifty Years ago. — The Colored Population. — 
Stories of the Old Quakers. 

ONE who has been all his life familiar with 
newspapers will naturally have a clutter of 
odds and ends, interesting, perhaps, if not important, 
in the drawers and pigeon-holes of his memory. 
Without being very old, a journalist may have wit- 
nessed what amounts to a complete revolution in 
the methods and proportions of newspaper manu- 
facture ; and such has been my ow^n fortune. There 
are not many people, perhaps, who can remember 
what a country newspaper office w^as fifty years ago, 
— the old-fasliioned, wooden-frame presses, the small 
fonts of type, the ink-balls ; the traditions which 
had come down from the days of Faust ; the fixed 
habits, and the odd names by which things Avere 
called ; the w^andering journeymen, usually given 
to occasional inebriety ; the apprentices, from tlie 
oldest, almost " out of his time," to " the devil," just 

1 



10 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

entering upon his time, and not finding it a charm- 
ino' one. I was almost born in such an office, if I 
may say so ; a considerable proportion of my infant 
untidiness was of printer's ink ; my small hands 
were often blistered by beating the forms with the 
balls aforesaid, while my father worked off the 
limited edition of perhaps four hundred copies of 
our newspaper, at first on that primitive machine, 
a Eamage press, with its two pulls and general 
clumsiness. We printed the outside of our little 
weekly on Friday, and the inside on the eve of the 
day of publication, which was Tuesday. When the 
glue-and-molasses roller was invented, all my seri- 
ous toils seemed to be over. It was the first labor- 
saving machine of which I had any practical 
knowledge, and a marvel I thought it. It came 
from New York, then as far off to me as Jerusalem, 
and with it came new and shining fonts of type — 
very small fonts — from the historic foundry of Mr. 
David Bruce, still famed, under the direction of my 
friend Mr. David W. Bruce, for the production of 
elegant letter. With this consignment also arrived 
the Specimen Book, — the first picture-book of im- 
portance which delighted my eyes, since grown a 
little tired of perpetual illustration. How we chil- 
dren fought (in an amicable way) for the first look 
at it ! I have seen one at least of the great galler- 
ies of the w^orld since, — the grandeurs of the old 
and the glories of the modern masters; but none 
of these gave me so much pleasure as Mr. Bruce's 



THE FIRST DECADE, 11 

advertising cuts and reproductions of Bewick and 
designs by Anderson. There was one print, freshly 
remembered now, of an unhappy w^retch standing 
upon the scaffold and just upon the point of being 
turned off, over which I shed tears in abundance. 
This was probably intended for some broadside de- 
scription of an execution. Then there were cuts 
for lotteries, auction-sales, advertisements of fugi- 
tive slaves, horse-races, toy-books, — all charming 
in those days of limited pictorial embellishment. 

This w^as, of course, all small and shabby in com- 
parison with that profuse employment of pictures 
which has betrayed us into making our eyes do the 
work of our brains. The best newspapers discour- 
age the use of cuts in the advertising columns, be- 
cause space is valuable, while such display is now 
needless and unmeaning ; but in magazines and 
books of a certain class, there are more illustrations 
than ever. The eyes are pampered at the expense 
of the head. There are newspapers which seem to 
be edited by the wood-engravers : I have always 
considered this to be an ionominious concession to 

o 

intellectual inactivity. Is it not nobler for the 
writer to be able by the proper use of w^ords to 
suggest all that is picturesque in a situation or cir- 
cumstance or character ? Is it not more creditable 
for the reader to bring to perusal those faculties of 
his mind, through the vigorous exercise of which 
he can make a picture for himself? The cuts in 
the primer are a concession to childish weakness of 



12 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

conception; but why should not men and women 
catch the landscape as the writer's pen depicts it, 
without being perpetually reminded that here was 
a tree, there a river, and upon the other side a 
castle, through precisely the same device which 
unmistakably assures the school-boy that "A was 
an Archer and shot at a frog" ? There may be a 
superabundance of illustration sufficient to drive us 
mad. Did anybody ever take any real comfort in 
that waste of industry which extends one volume 
to six, and makes folios out of orimnal octavos ? 
The reader will please pardon this critical episode. 
I do not object to binding in, here and there, a print 
when the book is worth it ; but the Lord deliver me 
from having anything to do with the puerile amuse- 
ment of inlaying, and from being the owner of one 
of those monuments of mistaken assiduity which 
one sometimes encounters at the book-auctions, and 
wdiich stimulate a certain class of bidders to frenzy ! 
When the newspaper was printed I carried it to 
the subscribers' houses " all in the morning early." 
There was another carrier at the other end of the 
village, but my share of the work amounted to about 
one hundred and fifty deliveries. The task was 
easy enough in the cool summer mornings, and I 
strolled along pleasantly, thinking of the book which 
I had read the night before, or of the other book 
which I intended to read in the evening. The very 
first verses which I wrote — " Ode to Commerce," 
" Elegy on the Death of Chatterton," " The Seasons : 



THE FIRST DECADE. 13 

in Four Parts " — were meditated during my pe- 
destrian labors. I fear that these poetical reveries 
were not favorable to prompt delivery. At any 
rate, I remember that there was a retired sea-cap- 
tain, of a truculent disposition, who was the terror 
of my life, and an embodied retribution whenever I 
was tardy. He would rush out, with an inflamed 
countenance, and denounce me from his door-steps, 
always charging me with having missed his news- 
paper the previous week -^ this was usually an im- 
agination of his own — and always stigmatizing 
me as a lazy lubber. Considering that I was about 
two feet high, of a timid diathesis, and not in the 
least like a tar in the forecastle, I always thought 
his rage to be not only inhuman but undignified. 
I once made an effort to conciliate him by asking 
him in confidence the exact length of a whale. 
Instead of giving me the precise figures, which I 
desired, on account of a marine romance which 
I was then engaged in writing, he became apoplectic 
at my audacity, and bolted into the house without 
•uttering a word. I heard of him afterward in some 
mixed nautical company speaking of me as a fool, 
prefixing a word beginning and ending with " d " ; 
and I must say that I then thought and now think his 
conduct very mysterious and enigmatical. " Thee 's 
a small boy to carry newspapers," said an old Quaker 
lady, gentle and soft-voiced, to me one bitter winter 
morning, and she took me in and comforted me 
with hot coffee ; and very much I preferred her 



14 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

treatment to his. I recall a comparison whicli I 
instituted between Captain Cook and tliis ferocious 
ex-captain, highly to the disadvantage of the latter. 
I also thought of what Benjamin Franklin would 
have said to him under such circumstances, and 
framed a speech in the manner of the Doctor, which 
I never had the courage to deliver. It was scath- 
ing ; but, unlike the undelivered speeches of some 
members of Congress, it was not printed, and is 
now lost to the world forever. 

I have dwelt a little upon my sea-captain, because 
my memory is full, as I write, of the bluft' whaling- 
skippers, who were a large and extremely respect- 
able part of our population. We were, in fact, 
nothing if not maritime, in New Bedford. One of 
my first escapades, just after I had achieved the 
art of walking, was to abscond to the river, into 
which I might have tumbled from the wharf, if I 
had not been discovered and led ignominiously back. 
Other travellers have made more elaborate reports : 
mine was simply, as afterward related to me, " Sight 
o' drink ! " We were a town of tars. At certain 
seasons tarpaulin hats, checked shirts, and ducks 
were the prevailing costume in the streets. Most 
of our public houses were for the sailors, and I 
can remember when the most respectable of these 
kept bars at which Jack might alleviate his thirst ; 
this was apparently great, so long as his money 
lasted, and afterward, when he sometimes drank up 
in advance the earnings of his next voyage. The 



THE FIRST DECADE. 15 

result was a good deal of fighting and disorder. I 
heard the Kiot Act read by a man on horseback 
and once or twice it was found necessary to call out 
our militia company. Nobody was killed, though 
we had several houses, of no doubtful character, 
pulled down or burned. The whale-ships recruiting 
at the Sandwich or Society Islands brought back, 
besides oil and bone, not a few tattooed natives, 
with the sound of whose astonishing language I was 
familiar, though I did not understand a word of it. 
These Kanakas, as they were called, were harmless, 
simple, fond of rum, and, I suspect, often swindled 
out of the little money which their voyages brought 
them. Ships, indeed, came to us from all parts of 
the world. We had often walking about swarthy 
Portuguese sailors, and mariners of the true broad- 
bottomed Dutch type, puf[ing their long pipes mildly. 
I knew by sight, almost as soon as I knew any- 
thing, the flag of every important sea-going Eu- 
ropean nation, — the Union Jack of England, the 
different tricolors of France, of Germany, and of 
Eussia, the yellow signal of Spain. All these nations 
wanted oil and candles, and came to New Bedford 
in pursuit of those commodities. Sometimes, when 
the wharves were full of ships, our streets — there 
were only two or three of much consequence — were 
really brilliant and bustling. Naturally, there was 
no news for us which could compare in value with 
ship news. Some of the whaling voyages were 
comparatively short, — just a run down to "the 



16 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Banks" (of Brazil), and so back again; but they 
grew longer and longer, as wliales became shy and 
scarce, until they reached a period of three years or 
more. AVe had hardly a home which was not inter- 
ested in their successful termination, — there were 
so many fathers and sons and husbands and broth- 
ers and sweethearts away on these long campaigns 
against the leviathans. Most of the intelligence 
was brought by returning ships, while the outgoers 
carried, each of them, perhaps half a bushel of let- 
ters, upon the mere chance of being able to deliver 
them. There came glad news and sad news from 
the seafarers, — reports of death, of wreck, of ill- 
fortune and small catches, of good luck and great 
takes. Somehow, the business was regarded as a 
sort of lottery, with large prizes and with mournful 
blanks. " A broken voyage " was the local phrase 
to express failure. Some captains and some ships 
were lucky ; others got a bad name, and never did 
anything afterward, so that the men would not sail 
with such masters or in such vessels, and the owners 
were glad to get rid of both. 

The voyages were made upon shares, and this 
system led to many small enterprises in fitting out 
ships. The property was divided into quarters, 
eighths, sixteenths, and thirty-seconds; and thus 
people of small means were able to invest in a 
speculation which might prove largely profitable. 
We had quite a number of persons of color in the 
town, some of them fugitive slaves. They were 



THE FIRST DECADE. 17 

thrifty, industrious, and, as a rule, well-behaved, 
and a few of them acquired fair fortunes. The 
town was antislavery from the start, being full of 
Quakers, — it was founded, in fact, by one of that 
denomination, — and the people were all Abolition- 
ists before William Lloyd Garrison began his won- 
derful work. We had a cook in our family who 
was a runaway, and who kept a long and exceed- 
ingly sharp knife always at hand. This she showed 
me in strict confidence, to my great terror, and in- 
formed me that it was intended for the reception 
of her old master if he should ever come after her. 
As she was afterward tried for the murder of her 
baby, though she was acquitted, undoubtedly she 
would have made it unpleasant for a deputy-marshal 
with a warrant for rendition. I think it was she 
who, being of a warm religious turn, told me that 
"hell was hot and would burn me," — a doctrine 
which, being then a fierce little Unitarian, I pro- 
ceeded to confute a priori and in various other 
logical ways. 

We had negroes in almost every branch of busi- 
ness. Before my time there had been a Captain 
Paul Cuffe, a black man, who commanded a hand- 
some ship with a white owner and a white crew. 
I believe that Captain Cuffe rose to the dignity of 
having his biography printed, some years afterward, 
as an antislavery document. The colored people 
on one occasion had put their money together and 
purchased a whaling brig, which bore the patriotic 



18 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

name of "The Eising States." It was manned 
mainly by blacks, who piously held a ]3rayer-meet- 
ing- before sailing, at which was put up one of the 
most extraordinary petitions ever offered at the 
Throne. Without intending the least irreverence, 
I may venture to give it as follows : " Lord, look 
down upon dis brig, de Eising States, a-fitted out 
by the enterprise ob our cuUud brederen. Par- 
ticularly, Lord, we pray de to look down upon 
de second mate, — him as is seated next to us, 
Lord, in de check shirt and de duck pantaloons." 
This is the prayer as I heard it repeated; and I 
am sure it did no discredit to the simple-minded 
and devout Christian who uttered it. Whether 
Heaven looked down upon the brig or not, she 
made "a broken voyage," and the speculation, I 
am sorry to say, came to grief, as the small specu- 
lations were apt to do. 

I have mentioned that we had a great many 
Quakers in our town. I shall always esteem it a 
privilege that I knew something of Quakerism 
while it yet retained much of its primitive quaint- 
ness and simplicity, and before it began to make 
those concessions to the world's opinions which 
diminish the marked distinctiveness of the sect, 
whether fortunately or otherwise. Fifty years ago 
Quakers had a good deal of the positive spirit 
which sent the proto-Friends to long imprisonment 
in England and to the scaffold in Boston. I re- 
member seeing a Quaker with his hat on in one 



THE FIRST DECADE. 19 

of our court-rooms. The sheriff, a man of great 
tendency to apoplexy, ordered him to take it off, 
and was answered by an indomitable look, such as 
George Fox might have cast upon the chief justice 
of England. The command was repeated by the 
sheriff in his noblest official manner. The Friend 
remained covered. I thought that the officer would 
then and there have died in his box. What might 
have come of it I do not know ; but the man in the 
broadbrim, having no further occasion to remain, 
solved the problem, and relieved the insulted maj- 
esty of the county by walking out, which he did 
after a somewhat victorious fashion, as if something 
of the natural creature still held possession of the 
territory under his drab coat. No Quaker nowa- 
days, I fancy, would insist upon the punctilio ; but 
it would be just a little refreshing to find a Friend 
willing to do so. 

One or two stories not malapropos of the last, and 
I may bring this instalment of my reminiscences to 
a conclusion. Everybody knows what was the hos- 
pitality of Friends in the olden time. As a matter 
of principle, they seldom went to public houses, for 
George Fox long before had proclaimed his testi- 
mony against doing so. They naturally entertained 
each other; and anybody who has eaten an old-fash- 
ioned quarterly meeting dinner, my word for it, has 
a pleasant memory thereof. We had a rich old 
Quaker merchant in our town, liberal as the air, 
and unspeakably hospitable, but sometimes also 



20 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

unspeakably tried by bores. There was a shrewd 
Friend who again and again went to the house 
about dinner-time to fish for an invitation. He 
had no notion of buying oil, but, with an air of 
business, he would ask, " Friend R, could thee tell 
me what I could buy sperm oil for now, by the ten 
gallons or the twenty gallons ? " One day, patience 
being exhausted, he got his answer : " John, see to 
it that thee never comes to my house again to in- 
quire the price of sperm oil, — about dinner-time ! " 
And I suppose that John did n't. 

I have sometimes thought that a pretty little book 
might be written about these old Quakers by any 
one acquainted with their peculiar and charming 
literature, and generally familiar with their odd 
phraseology and quaint ways. What could be 
droller than the report made by a committee that 
the monthly meeting in a neighboring town " was 
rather on the dwindle " ? Then their pertinacity 
about matters of small importance seems almost' 
incredible. My great-grandfather must have been 
a Friend of extremely solid convictions ; for having 
once borrowed an overcoat of a " worldly " acquaint- 
ance in which to attend some yearly, quarterly, 
monthly, weekly First Day or preparative meeting, 
he did not feel free to wear it with buttons on the 
back, where they were merely ornamental. He, 
therefore, being moved by the Spirit to do so, cut 
them off, and so went, with his mind at ease, to 
the gathering. Afterwards he found himself in a 



THE FIRST DECADE. 21 

curious dilemma. He could not conscientiously 
put the buttons on again, and he hardly liked to 
return the garment without them. How he settled 
the matter I do not know ; probably he referred it 
to " the meeting." I have spoken of the Quakers' 
quaint phraseology. There is a plenty of this in the 
diaries of their preachers ; and one of them, which 
I used to read to an old aunt, almost as soon as I 
could read at all, had two standing formulas. When 
the diarist, who was a wandering preacher, had 
been favored of the Spirit, he always wrote in his 
journal that he "had enjoyed an open time"; oth- 
erwise, he put upon record forever that he had 
suffered from " a shut-up time," and was very dole- 
ful about it. When the schisms came, the aston- 
ishing style in which these earnest folk wrangled 
and disputed and let their angry passions rise was 
really a little scandalous in a people of professed 
peace principles. Those who want to know about 
this should read the " Life of Elias Hicks " or the 
"Diary of Thomas Shillitoe." The latter was a 
small English Friend, of whom Elizabeth Fry said 
that he was " by calling a shoemaker, but grace had 
made him a perfect gentleman." When he came to 
our town he was entertained by a wealthy Friend, 
in whose fine carriage he refused to ride to a meet- 
incr at a villagje six or seven miles distant. " I shall 
be there as soon as thee, George," he said ; and off 
he started at a pace which would have done him 
great credit in a walking match, if I may suggest 
such a thincr without irreverence. 



22 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTEE IL 

THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED. 
Advertising in the Old Day. — Amusements. — Political 

CONTKOVERSIES. — DEMOCRATS AND FEDERALISTS. — ThE 

Election of John Quincy Adams. — John Adams and 
Franklin. — The Anti-masonic Excitement. — William 
CuLLEN Bryant. — Early Reading. — Ralph "Waldo 
Emerson. 

"TXT"HEX I came to look over a file of my father's 
VV newspaper the other day, for the sake of 
refreshing my memory, I was more surprised to find 
how little there was in it than to discover how little 
it was in itself. In that time of small things sub- 
scribers must have been easily satisfied : purchasers 
there were none. The news from Europe, when 
there was any, was usually about six weeks old, or 
even older. Of editorial comment upon men and 
things, there was a plentiful lack. There were very 
few communications fortunately, for most of them 
were far from interesting. The advertising amounted 
to nearly nothing at all. There was a column de- 
voted to some patent medicine — the Catholicon, I 
think it was called — with a fierce-looking cut of 
Hercules making matters disagreeable for the Hydra, 
which went in week after week for several years — 
indeed, I suspect, long after wretched experimenters 



THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED. 23 

had ceased to swallow the fluid abomination. I 
never could find out that we got anything for the 
insertion of this announcement, and I was so angry 
at what I regarded as a double swindle that I con- 
ceived a prejudice against patent medicines which 
has lasted me to this day, and is still as vigorous as 
ever. The stuff was kept for sale by an old Quaker 
apothecary, who drew teeth for six cents each, and 
in the case of juvenile extractions always gave the 
money back to soothe the weeping child. Our 
printing oftice had few excitements, and these few 
were far between. One summer day we were all 
floored by a stroke of lightning; but this, out of 
respect for the memory of Franklin, we considered 
to be rather a privilege than otherwise. Another 
day, a Federalist pulled the nose of a Democrat 
opposite our office, and the excitement for a time 
was tremendous ; but things settled down into the 
old, dead calm speedily. The tedium of the sleepy 
town was occasionally broken by the arrival of a 
menagerie or a circus. Ah ! never shall I forget 
how eagerly I anticipated the advent of one exhibi- 
tion which we were fairly warned would consist 
only of the American eagle, in a living state, and 
captured I do not remember where. I had never 
seen the proud Bird of Freedom except upon flags 
or documents, with a bunch of arrows in one claw, 
an olive-branch in the other, and a scroll with the 
legend, "E pluribus, etc." That was the kind of 
eagle which I expected to see, and cheerfully paid 



24 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

six and one-quarter cents to see, and did not see by 
any manner of means; for, passing the box-office 
whicli was all out of doors, into the pavilion which 
was a stable, in one corner and in a dirty cage I 
saw, not the " fierce gray bird " with a shield sus- 
pended from his neck, but something drooping and 
disagreeable, moulting and miserable, and looking 
exceedingly like a convalescent hen. It was a 
dreadful disillusion. If he could only have spread 
himself a little, it would have been some consola- 
tion, but he could n't ; the child of the air had n't 
space to do it in. 

The heat of them was, before my time, a little 
abated, but there was a plenty of stories of savage 
political controversies. The embargo had almost 
ruined the business of the town. The British fleet 
came and destroyed whatever the embargo had left. 
Jefferson's French proclivities, real and supposed, 
gave us catchwords and nicknames which lasted 
lon<r after the master of Monticello was at rest. 
The little town opposite ours was full of Democrats, 
and it was called Corsica after Bonaparte's birth- 
place, and may be called so still sometimes. I well 
remember several Jeffersonians and Madisonians who 
were dubbed Citizen this or Citizen that, and who 
were charged with holding Danton and Eobespierre 
in the most affectionate esteem. The pulpit rung 
with political preaching, bad in style, worse in tem- 
per, and anything but pacific in its influences. My 
grandfather, who was a regular blue-light Federalist, 



THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED, 25 

saw his party grow small, and the other party larger, 
with feelinixs of wrath which he did not make the 
slightest effort, being a peppery old gentleman, to 
disguise. One day at town meeting he was taunted 
with the growth of his natural enemies in number, 
something after this fashion : *' Well, Captain C, 
there was a time when there were only two or three 
Democrats in town ; but there is a plenty of them 
here now." My revered ancestor was equal to the 
occasion. " Yes," he replied, " and there was a 
time when there was only one devil in the infernal 
regions ; but there is a plenty of them there now." 
This was considered rather a neat retort, and came 
down to us traditionally as evidence of the family 
presence of mind on important occasions. 

Apropos of politics, I am sometimes inclined to 
believe that the zeal and earnest interest in them of 
the American citizen has not a little abated. Our 
contests do not seem to me passionately bitter, as 
the old ones were ; and I think that the number of 
the indifferent is, at least, not growing smaller. AYe 
had but a melancholy evening of it when the news 
came that General Jackson had been elected to the 
presidency, and that John Quincy Adams was de- 
feated. My impression is that I cried, having arrived 
at the mature age of eight years, and understanding 
such things much better then than I have since, or, 
for that matter, do now. I had a strong belief not 
only that the republic would go to ruin, but that 
general ignorance would prevail, that no new books 



26 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

would be printed, that public schools would be abol- 
ished, that universal poverty would ensue, and that 
the whaling business especially would come to an 
end. Why should I not have been thus melancholy 
when my elders and betters made perfect hypochon- 
driacs of themselves? I doubt if any public man 
was ever more thoroughly hated than General Jack- 
son was then in Massachusetts. We even named a 
cutaneous complaint contracted in barbers' shops 
after that much admired and much abused hero. 
Then there was a particularly disagreeable square- 
toed boot which we called the Jackson. Mr. Adams 
paid us a visit not long after, and, being always in 
search of sights, I went down to the pier to see him 
land. I thought him fearfully old and shaky, but he 
lived long enough after for me to write his obituary 
notice in my own newspaper. I was one of a great 
tail of boys who followed the good man to his hotel. 
He had some infirmity of the eyes, and my impres- 
sion was that he was shedding tears at the enthusi- 
astic character of our attentions. I was introduced 
to him ten years afterward, and it did not appear to 
me that he was overwarm in his demeanor. His 
style of handshaking was of the pump-handle sort, 
and, to say the least of it, he was not hotly affec- 
tionate in his greetings ; but perhaps he had never 
heard how I fought his battles when a boy. He 
was fortunate neither in making friends nor in 
keeping them : had he been of a more genial man- 
ner, he might have been re-elected to the presi- 



THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED, 27 

dency. But what could be expected of a man who 
used to cut a hole in the ice that he might take his 
morning bath in the gelid waters of the Potomac ? 
Of course he had a strong constitution, and he had 
need of it. His life was one of continual disap- 
pointments and ceaseless battles. He could not be 
winning in his ways. He would say disagreeable 
things in company. Like his father, he made no 
attempt to conceal his dislikes and prejudices. He 
did not relish contradiction, and he was a good 
hater. Once, as I have heard the story told, in con- 
versation a Southern gentleman said, half-appeal- 
ingiy, "Your young men in New England are 
better trained than ours ; they are not surrounded 
by such bad influences : that, perhaps, makes a dif- 
ference." Mr. Adams answered at once, and defi- 
antly, and even as if he had been in a passion, " I 
was left pretty much to myself when a mere boy in 
the most corrupt capital of Europe ; but it made no 
difference to me." The unfortunate Southerner had 
nothing more to say. It was very like a snub, and 
he felt it to be so; while the probability of his 
voting for Mr. Adams upon any possible occasion 
was immeasurably lessened. This Adams temper 
was proverbial all about the region in which the 
family was domiciled. On the morning after tlie 
inauguration of the statue of Franklin in Boston I 
was talking with Mr. Charles Francis Adams in a 
bookstore, and I recall a forcible parallel which he 
drew between his grandfather and Franklin. " My 



28 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

grandfather/' he said, " never could keep his temper : 
Franklin always kept his. The two men never 
could get along together : my grandfather was all 
fire, said imprudent things and lost his self-control ; 
Franklin took advantage of this, answered calmly, 
argued warily, and for this reason usually got the 
better of the argument." There can be no harm in 
thus referring to the infirmity of a very great man, 
especially when it is remembered that his vehemence 
of spirit was of infinite service in revolutionary 
times to the struggling colonies. I have heard old 
men in Quincy talk of him by the hour. He had, 
for some reason or other, given most of them a scold- 
ing, and a scolding from John Adams must have 
been something of an infliction ; yet I never heard 
any of his neighbors speak of him without reverence. 
If they laughed at his foibles, it was in a respectful 
way. One ancient citizen expressed the opinion 
that cider, of which the retired statesman was fond, 
made him sometimes a little cross ; but when I 
answered that he had earned the right to be cross, 
if he pleased, the assent to my opinion was a hearty 
one. I am in perpetual fear of getting garrulous, or 
I might tell how John Adams's wife cared for him 
in his age, and softened the asperities of his temper, 
watched over him till death called her away, and 
he was left a lonesome and moribund old man, with 
his passion for public affairs still unabated. 

I caught in my boyhood, if I may say so, the tail 
end of the Federalist and Democratic storm ; but we 



THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED. 29 

were enjoying something like an era of good feeling 
when the anti-Masonic excitement arose to vex our 
peace, and to make those who had been good friends 
and neighbors hate each other for a time heartily. 
It all came of that miserable Morgan matter in New 
York ; and to this day I have never understood how 
a party could possibly be founded upon such a trans- 
action. Yet a party there was, and quite an impor- 
tant one. It put Mr. Seward into the State Senate 
in 1830 ; it made Joseph Eitner governor of Penn- 
sylvania in 1835 ; it secured the alliance of such 
men as John Quincy Adams, William Wirt, Francis 
Granger, Thurlow Weed, to mention no others. It 
carried the State of Vermont for Wirt and Ellmaker, 
its candidates for President and Vice-President ; and 
six years afterward there was not enough of it left 
anywhere to save it from the limb)o of " scattering." 
I believe the best opinion to be that Morgan was 
murdered by certain very zealous Freemasons; I 
heard a peripatetic lecturer say once that he was in 
a lodge in New York City when the fact of the mur- 
der was officially communicated to the brethren ; but 
I am not sure that he told* the truth. He gave a 
kind of exhibition, and went through what he said 
were the ceremonies of initiation ; arid though I was 
fiercely prejudiced against the order, they struck my 
boyish fancy as somewhat imposing. My grand- 
father, who was a Master Mason, seceded, and made 
me a present of his apron, a pretty one, which I kept 
for a long time as a trophy. The Masons themselves 



30 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

were in rather a helpless condition. They could not 
nominate for office Masons as such, for tliat would 
have been a surrender of the very point upon which 
they always insisted, — that they did not carry their 
Masonry into politics. So they voted as they could 
and for whom they could ; wdth the Jackson men, 
or, in our part of the State, with the National Ee- 
publicans ; and generally they had rather a forlorn 
and friendless time of it. They were good citizens 
enough, with no notion of murdering anybody ; the 
lodge-meetings had been social and friendly, and 
sometimes convivial when the brethren " passed from 
labor to refreshment " ; and it irked them naturally 
to be spoken of as felons or the apologists of felons. 
Our election contests were about as hot as any 
which I have since known. The majority rule pre- 
vailed, and we tried six times in vain to elect a mem- 
ber of Congress in our district, until my soul was 
sick with the still-recurring report of " No choice." 
The seventh trial brought good luck to the other side 
and bad to ours ; they elected their man by a major- 
ity of about a liundred. Again I mourned for the re- 
public ruined, as I have so many times since ; but the 
feeling which now possesses my mind, upon recall- 
ing this teapot tempest, is one of inexpressible aston- 
ishment that over seven thousand human beings, all 
tolerably well-furnished wdth brains, should have 
gone so maliciously mad about nothing. The lodge 
soon afterward went industriously to work again, and 
made more Entered Ap^^rentices than ever; most 



THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED. 31 

of the Massachusetts anti-Masons drifted into the 
Democratic party, under the leadership of that 
apostle of political virtue, Mr. Benjamin F. Hallett ; 
and so faded out, exhaled, and vanished the first po- 
litical party of my love, leaving behind it nothing 
but a quantity of musty old files of newspapers and 
of pamphlets, which the most devoted of antiquari- 
ans can hardly read without yawning. 

I have always esteemed it one of the luckiest 
features of my lot that from the very beginning I 
had all the books which I cared to read, and more ; 
that I was nurtured upon good, solid literature, and 
was permitted to devour whatever I pleased to de- 
vour, without any meddlesome or fussy interference. 
Surely it was something to have been a child before 
the present style of juvenile literature came into such 
fashion, — before this avalanche of Peter Parleyisms. 
I own to a little embarrassment when, at the tender 
age of six or seven years, I was detected reading 
" The Friend," of Colerido^e, — no doubt with a wise 
expression of countenance. Such a thunderous guf- 
faw did my uncle set up at this discovery that the 
small metaphysician was utterly confounded, and 
blushed as if he had been caught pilfering blackberry 
jam. Yet even then I found a pleasure in some of 
Coleridge's deliciously musical sentences, though 
they might have been written in Arabic for all I 
understood of them. Books ! Yes, it was somethimr 
to be trained in a home which, however poor in 
meaner property, was always full of books, either 



32 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

borrowed from the library or inherited from reading 
ancestors, or, may be, purchased in prosperous days. 
What discussions we had of their merits, and what 
critical battles Ave fought for our favorites ! Was it 
not an intellectual fortune in itself to escape the era 
of the Minerva Press, and to be born in the year in 
which " Kenil worth " and " The Pirate " appeared ? 
Was it not something to have all these wholesome 
books waiting for me, so that when, not many years 
after. Sir Walter threw off his incognito in 1827, I 
had read him through and through from " Waverley " 
to " Castle Dangerous," and knew that " Guy Man- 
nering " and " The Antiquary " were the best of the 
series, if not worth all the rest put together ? Long 
years after, as I stood in the house in Edinburgh 
in which Scott did the hardest of his work, — that 
dreadful toil wdiich followed the bankruptcy of Con- 
stable, — and was shown the very room in which 
this pitiful construction of books to pay the debts of 
others went on, I thought of myself eagerly devour- 
ing his tales of wonder, and, though a mere boy, 
catching something of their excellence in that far-off 
little Massachusetts seaport. I thought, too, of that 
fine story of him, — how his eyes Avere suffused with 
tears when a lady, whose life had not been a happy 
one, told him what a consolation his romances had 
been to her in the hours of sickness and anxiety. 

We greatly valued in our family one connection ; 
we were as proud of the fact that William Cullen 
Bryant was our kinsman as if we had traced our 



THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED. 33 

lineage to tlie House of Hapsburg. Dr. Bryant 
brought his precocious son down to New Bedford 
to visit my great-grandfather, not long after " The 
Embargo " was printed, when the little author must 
have been about fifteen years old. He was consid- 
ered a wonder, and justly so ; but my grandiather, 
wlio was of a positive turn of mind, like all the 
Bryants, was sceptical about the authenticity of the 
bright lad's productions, and intimated that the re- 
puted author must have had large assistance. As 
no Bryant was ever known to give up an opinion, 
having once adopted it, I suspect that my grand- 
father held to his ; though if he had lived only a 
little longer he would have comprehended that the 
writer of " Thanatopsis " stood in little need of help 
from anybody. 

I do not know that a boy could be brought up on 
better literary sustenance than the Waverley nov- 
els and Bryant's poems, both, from their robust- 
ness and fine literary sense, wholesome pabulum 
for young readers. Then, about fifty years ago, lyce- 
ums and lecturing came into fashion. We had our 
share of the latter witli an institution, mainly 
scientific, of our own. The pulpit, too, was quite 
as earnest and perhaps a little more solid than 
in our day. It is curious that I should first have 
heard the lovable voice of Ptalph Waldo Emerson 
Avhen he was the Kev. Ptalph Waldo Emerson. One 
day there came into our pulpit the most gracious 
of mortals, with a face all benignity, who gave out 

3 



34 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the first hymn and made the first prayer as an angel 
might have read and prayed. Our choir was a 
pretty good one, but its best was coarse and dis- 
cordant after Emerson's voice. I remember of the 
sermon only that it had an indefinite charm of sim- 
plicity, quaintness, and wisdom, with occasional il- 
lustrations from nature, wdiich w^ere about the most 
delicate and dainty things of the kind which I had 
ever heard. I could understand them, if not the 
fresh philosopljical novelty of the discourse. Mr. 
Emerson preached for a good many Sundays, lodg- 
ing in the home of a Quaker lady, just below ours. 
Seated at my own door, I saw him often go by, 
and once, in the exuberance of my childish ad- 
miration, I ventured to nod to him and to say " Good 
morning ! " To my astonishment, he also nodded 
and smilingly said " Good morning ! " and that is all 
the conversation I ever had with the sage of Con- 
cord, — not enough decidedly for a reminiscent vol- 
ume about him after he -has left a world which he 
has made wiser and happier. He gave us afterw^ard 
two lectures based upon his travels abroad, and w^as 
at a great deal of trouble to hang up prints, by way 
of illustration. There was a picture of the tribune 
in the Ufi&zi Gallery in Florence, painted by one of 
our townsmen ; and I noted Mr. Emerson's great 
anxiety that it should have a good light, and his lam- 
entation when a good light was found to be impos- 
sible. The lectures themselves were so fine — en- 
chantinfT, we thouo^ht them — that I have hungered 



THE FIRST DECADE CONCLUDED, 35 

to see them in print, and have recalled the evenings 
upon which they were delivered as trne "Arabian 
nights." Mr. Giles, the Irish essayist, told me a 
nice little story of Emerson, with which this chap- 
ter may conclude. We had a rich old merchant, 
who was a tireless talker, with whom our lecturer 
sometimes lodged. The good-hearted gentleman 
caught Mr. Giles one evening, and kept him, a 
complacent but dreadfully weary listener, morally 
under arrest, until nearly sunrise ; then, as they 
parted for the night, or rather for the morning, 
the garrulous and gratified monologist said, " I like 
you, Mr. Giles : you are willing to hear what I 
have to say. Mr. Emerson was here the other 
night, after he had lectured, and he said he did not 
wish to hear me talk — that he had ratlier go to 
bed." Not that the kindest of men meant to be 
uncivil: he merely spoke with the simplicity and 
directness of a Greek philosopher. 



REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 



CHAPTEE III. 

MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 

The Rev. Orville Dewey.— A Pulpit Plagiarist.— The 
Negro Pew. — Colorphobia in School.— Ephraim Pea- 
body.— John H. Morrison.— John Weiss.— Dr. John 0. 
Choules.— Dr. Channing. — A Preacher who couldn't 
BE stopped. — John Newland Maffit.— Dr. Samuel 
West.— John Pierpont. 

PEEHAPS it is not always so Mly remembered 
as it should be that the pulpit, apart from its 
great religious mission, may also be a felicitous 
educator of the taste and judgment. It is a great 
deal to listen week after week to thoughtful, learned, 
and eloquent discourses, full of piety unprofaued 
by clumsy construction and platitudinous common- 
place. Our plain, unpretending wooden church was 
my first college, its pastor my first professor of 
rhetoric, and the only one I ever had who was 
good for anything. The first clergyman to whom 
I really listened was Dr. Orville Dewey, who for 
ten years preached to us sermons which I thought 
as fine as those of Massillon or Bossuet or Jeremy 
Taylor: to speak frankly, whatever critical judg- 
ment I have since acquired has not much modified 
my opinion. I still place some of Dr. Dewey's ser- 
mons in the front rank of such literature. Unfortu- 



MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 37 

nately, few people read printed sermons with much 
relish, and the general style of pulpit eloquence 
has undergone a marked change, not much for the 
better ; but if great purity and force of language, a 
rich rhetoric well kept in hand, sinewy logical 
power, vigorous and uncompromising earnestness, 
with a gentle liberality, — if all these together make 
great sermons. Dr. Dewey's were great. The best 
of them are in print, and the reader who does not 
care to take my word may judge for himself The 
Doctor had a way, of which we did not complain, 
of preaching his sermons over and over again until 
they were perfectly familiar to us, and we knew 
when the finest passages were at hand. So when a 
dapper little young man, fresh from the Cambridge 
Divinity School, ministered unto us, and treated us 
to the best parts of one of them which had been 
published, astonishment and indignation filled all 
the pews. Those who, in their righteous wrath at 
the larceny, refused to attend church in the after- 
noon missed the opportunity of hearing the youth- 
ful apostle repeat the offence. If there had been 
people enough at our vespers for a mob, I think we 
should have had one. Pulpit plagiarists are always 
getting themselves into divers troubles, but I have 
never heard of a foolhardier defiance of detection 
than this. 

We had in our church "s\hat I suppose is not to 
be found in many churches at present, — a pew for 
black people, though I never saw any blacks in it. 



38 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Under tlie circumstances they declined very prop- 
erly to pray with ns, but set up a tabernacle for 
themselves in the outskirts of the village, where 
they could make as much noise as they pleased ; 
and sometimes they pleased to make a great deal. 
As future ages will probably decline to believe in 
the negro pew at all, except upon good evidence, 
I hereby put it upon record. Once, in a meeting- 
house in another town, I saw a negro admitted 
to the church in a peculiar way. All the white 
postulants were first received. Then the minister 
said, to my astonishment, " John, come down ! " and 
I saw John descending from his pen, with much 
meekness depicted upon his sable countenance. 
When he had been properly posed before the altar, 
the minister said, "John, you have been a great 
liar." "Yes, massa." "And a great thief" "I 
know it, massa." ''And I do not suppose that 
there is a person in this congregation who thinks 
that you will abide by your professions." " Yes, I 
will, massa." So the sable convert went back to 
his pew or pen, by no means in a state of spiritual 
exaltation ; and everybody thought how charming 
it was in the minister to let him come into the fold 
at all. But forty years ago this colorphobia was in 
full and fierce and most uncharitable force. I do 
not know how many towns had their negro suburb, 
but I know that we had one. I went to a public 
school in which the black boys were seated by them- 
selves, and the white offenders were punished by 



MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 39 

beins: oblis^ed to sit with them. Such a Gjross im- 
morahty seems hardly credible. One is tempted 
to burst into adjectives in writing of it, and to set 
it down as coarse and cruel, and worse. A respecta- 
ble negro of our town had a white wife, who was 
made so utterly miserable by the scoffs and scorn 
of her neighbors that she did her best to become 
herself black, exposing her face constantly to the 
sun, until she attained a tolerable color, and might 
have passed at least for a mestizo. Think of a 
lyceura, established to promote popular knowledge, 
actually debating whether black people should be 
allowed to purchase tickets for the lecture course ! 
Ours did that once, I am ashamed to say, and de- 
cided the question in the negative. But enough of 
this ; it is not pleasant to remember. 

There was a clergyman in our town, who got into 
scrapes afterward, and did not live his last years 
in much credit. We had a drunken ne'er-do-well 
blacksmith called George, famous for his mother- 
wit, wdio was discovered by the minister sitting upon 
the steps of his church, very unwell from the effects 
of imprudent potations. " Well, George, drunk 
again, eh ? " said the reverend man. " No, parson," 
answ^ered George, " I ain't drunk. The fact is (hie) 
that I was thinking (hie) of jining your church ; 
and the more (hie) I think of it, the sicker I grow." 
It was this same minister who rebuked an old and 
exceedingly well-salted sea-captain for his unre- 
strained use of profane language. "Never mind," 



40 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

was the answer ; '' there is n't a man in town who 
would n't rather hear me swear than hear you pray." 
We had a succession of excellent pastors, among 
them the Eev. Ephraim Peabody, a sweet and saintly 
man, who left us to go to the King's Chapel in 
Boston, and who died not many years after. He 
was the clergyman mentioned with such effusion by 
Miss Martineau in her " Eetrospect of Western 
Travel." She met him in Cincinnati, and described 
him and his wife, and their experiences and trials 
and adventures, with so much particularity that 
Mrs. Peabody said with great archness, " Dear I 
what babes in the wood she makes of us ! " 

Colleague of Dr. Peabody was the Eev. Dr. John 
H. Morrison, a divine still living and still engaged 
in valuable religious labors. It would be impossi- 
ble to overestimate the importance of the encourage- 
ment which a boy of literary aspirations may receive 
from one older in years, and with that assured 
position which gives the right to advise. The kind- 
ness with which Dr. Morrison treated me, the timely 
suggestions which he offered, the generosity with 
which he loaned me books, the ways which he found 
out of intimating to the great commercial crowd 
around me that he did not despise my juvenile 
aspirations, I remember now, with mingled feelings 
of pleasure and mortification. He is the man whose 
pardon I should ask, if pardon is to be asked of 
anybody, for my failure to have written a real book. 
Perhaps he will smile to learn that a hundred works 



MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 41 

have been planned, and have tragically perished in 
the mere proposal. But I know too that he is a 
scholar who will comprehend that his own quiet 
and secluded ways have not been mine ; that I 
could not make books as he has ; that the instant 
pressure of occupation, the necessity of winning from 
day to day daily bread, the impossibility of careful 
and prolonged study, which is tlie first condition of 
worthy work, — that all these have compelled me to 
abate something of that literary aspiration which 
his generous encouragement did so much to kindle. 
How well Dr. Morrison always asserted the dignity 
of letters, I can never forget ; nor how he asked 
me, a poor, raw lad, to lecture at the lyceum, of which 
he was a director. I blush to remember that even 
then I was audacious enough to write about Shakes- 
peare ; and my only consolation is that perhaps tliere 
w^ere not many in the audience who were capable 
of detecting my sciolisms. It was kinder of the 
Doctor to ask me, because I was then an absurd and 
blatant radical, nurtured in the school of Orestes A. 
Brownson, as that divine Doctor then happened to 
teach in it, and just as far as possible from that 
serene and superior position which Dr. Morrison's 
wisdom had led him to occupy. He bore with my 
foibles, he smiled at the impetuosity of youth. All 
through these papers I may be called upon to ask 
pardon of somebody ; but the apology which I now 
make is of tenderer issue and comes from my inmost 
heart. 



42 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

One of our notable pastors was tlie lamented 
John Weiss dead only a little while ago. Nobody 
who heard him in the full flush and strength of his 
youth can forget his energy and power. He was 
one of the boldest preachers I have ever known. 
He had his own theory of the proper topics for ser- 
mons, and one of them he conceived to be the ini- 
quity of slavery. He was neither a Boanerges nor 
a giant. On the contrary, he was a small man, with 
a thin, sharp voice; but when his subject was one 
which thoroughly warmed him, his stature was for- 
gotten, and his tones were like those of a battle-cry. 
He preached against the nomination of General 
Taylor for the presidency to a house full of Whigs ; 
and though he once in my hearing made rags and 
tatters of the Compromise Measures, only one man 
went out, and he pleaded illness for doing so. Mr. 
Weiss's naturalistic theology is known to all; he 
was Christian in thought and feeling and purpose, 
but not in dogma and doctrine. He was usually 
classed with Parker and Frothingham, and Samuel 
Johnson of Salem, Mass., though it is absurd to 
attempt to group together men who think and speak 
absolutely and only for themselves. ]\Ir. Weiss's 
charming lectures on Shakespeare were delivered in 
New York, and will be pleasantly remembered by 
those who heard them. A good scholar and a con- 
stant and enthusiastic thinker, he was in his ways 
and manners and social speech almost a boy, so 
winning and bright and courteous that those who 



MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 43 

knew liirn well loved liim clearly, and those avIio 
knew him never so little began to love him at once. 
Of quite a different fashion was another of our 
clergymen, the Eev. John Overton Choules, of the 
Baptist Church, well known as the friend of Corne- 
lius Vanderbilt, with whom and in whose yacht he 
made a long voyage, and wrote a pretty hook about 
it afterward. I suppose that at one time no man of 
his profession had more friends in all parts of the 
country than Dr. Choules. I recall with pleasure his 
portly figure and his small stature, the merry twinkle 
of his eye, his cordial and engaging manner, his 
inexhaustible fund of anecdote, his spectacles, and 
his constant cigar. He was a restless little man, 
always travelling, a welcome awaiting him in a 
hundred houses, public and private. He was by 
birth and education an Endishman, and could talk 
well from personal acquaintance of John Foster, 
Eobert Hall, and other lights of the Baptist con- 
nection. He was particularly well versed in the 
history of dissent, and his fine library was full of 
rare books relating to the commonwealth. A great 
many bibliographical nuggets were scattered when, 
after his death, his collection was sold at auction. 
And this reminds me that when he died, to the grief 
of all who intimately knew him, sundry small people 
of the smaller press saw fit to speak of him in an 
underbred, familiar way, as if he had been more of 
a Ion vivant and jester than a clergyman. Tliey 
were much surprised when others, about whose 



44 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

critical judgment there could be no mistake, wrote 
of him gravely, and showed of what little account 
were his foibles when weisfhed agjainst his merits 
and his invincible amiability. I remember that 
Edwin P. Whipple, the essayist, said to me, "Dr. 
Choules had a great deal of religion, and of the good 
solid kind, too," — by which Mr. Whipple meant 
rather more than he said. 

When one gets into the company of clergymen, 
he ought, in this graceless world, to be in no hurry 
to get out of it. Of Channing, I can only say that 
I just saw and heard him; and I now think that 
his great reputation as a preacher was rather due to 
the winning and apostolic graces of his manner than 
to the force and vigor of his discourses. As one 
reads his printed sermons, there is, I think, a sense 
of feebleness, and of matter larger than the manner. 
This came to some extent from what has ruined far 
smaller men than the great apostle of Unitarianism, 
— a habit of refining, and a fear of anything like in- 
elegance. A clergyman who was upon intimate terms 
with Dr. Channing, and saw a good many of liis 
manuscripts, told me that they were remarkable for 
interlineations and erasures ; and that the writer's 
constant effort seemed to be to get rid of adjectives, 
which was, of course, laudable. The moral courage 
of this great man, exhibited in his essay on slavery, 
w^as the more notable because he was naturally 
cautious, and had a great horror of anything like 
extremes. He struck the key-note of the whole 



MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 45 

crusade against the " institution," as wiseacres used 
to be fond of calling it, when he exclaimed, " Prop- 
erty in man ! You might as well talk of property 
in angels ! " Beacon Street was wonderfully stirred 
by this unexpected evangel; but it encountered 
many surprises of the kind before all was over, and 
had to bear as best it might the defection of many 
of its most respectable denizens from the safe limits 
of its frigid and eminently proper conservatism. 
Shock followed shock and desertion desertion, until 
there was nobody left to hold up the hands of Dan- 
iel Webster save a few small clergymen and smaller 
lawyers, with here and there a journalist who so 
misused types that some readers regretted their in- 
vention. 

In Lockhart's Life of Scott there is an account of 
an American clergyman who visited Abbotsford, and 
astonished the servants — for he did not see the 
master — by the eccentricity of his conduct. This 
good man, for he was really a good one, was uncom- 
monly long-winded ; and preaching one summer af- 
ternoon before some religious convention in our 
church, he became so much excited, and followed 
the rule of Demosthenes with such energy, that he 
knocked his sermon from the pulpit-cushion, through 
an open window, into the street. I never saw an 
instance of greater self-possession. What did he 
do ? He went on with perfect composure : some- 
body went out in search of the vagabond leaves; 
and when they w^ere brought back and placed before 



46 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

him, he simply rearranged them, and proceeded for 
an hour or two as if nothing had happened. All 
he did during the absence of his sermon was to take 
off his spectacles, maybe out of some delicate ap- 
preciation of the everlasting fitness of things. 

Perhaps the reader will remember a Methodist 
preacher, the Eev. John Newland Llaffit, an Irish- 
man who always reminded me of the Irish orator in 
" Nicholas Nickleby," who made a speech before the 
Crumpet and Muffin Association, and who said that 
he should demand an extension of the blessings of 
the society to his own native land, that he looked 
eagerly forward to that time when crumpets should 
be toasted in her lowly cabins, and muffin-bells 
rung in her dark-green valleys. Mr. ]\Iaffit pub- 
lished a book of which I heard when a boy : a sen- 
tence in it, something like this, we used to quote 
with screams of laughter as a capital example of the 
way in which our compositions should not be writ- 
ren : " From the far-famed h aunts of romantic Erin 
a solitary stranger comes to lay his dew-starred of- 
fering at Columbia's feet." Long years after, when 
I heard him preach, Mr. Maffit's style w^as still as 
ornate as the tail of a peacock ; yet he became Pro- 
fessor of Ehetoric in a southwestern college, a chap- 
lain of Congress, and even published a volume of 
poems. He had an Irishman's facility for getting 
into trouble. His standing in the church was a 
little shaken, and I am not sure that when he died 
he was a member of any conference. He is worth 



MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 47 

mentioning as an instance of the power of a mere 
rhetorician over popular masses. When I heard 
him I knew that, so far as taste and substance were 
concerned, it was all very bad ; yet I listened to his 
exquisitely musical voice in a kind of trance, and 
only detected the unsubstantial finery when he had 
stopped speaking. 

A church is full of traditions ; and ours, which 
had passed from the granite foundations of Ortho- 
doxy to the pleasant pastures of Unitarianism, had 
its full share of them. And here I may beg my 
indulijjent reader to remember that I sometimes 
speak of what I have myself seen and heard, and 
sometimes of what was told me. I could never 
have seen the Rev. Samuel West, D. D., among 
other reasons, because he died thirteen years before 
I was born ; but I saw his old meeting-house, two 
or three miles from the town, with its tall pulpit 
and great square pews going to wreck and ruin, 
while, with great numbers of his congregation, he 
peacefully slumbered in the adjacent demesne. This 
was the Dr. West who had the temerity to write a 
treatise in reply to Edwards "On the Will." He 
did the State some service during the Eevolution, 
being a vigorous writer on the side of the rebels. 
He it was who performed for the patriots a service 
of no small importance : he deciphered tlie treason- 
able letters of Dr. Benjamin Church, — an exposure 
which rendered it necessary to lock up that false 
physician. He came to greater grief afterward, for 



48 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the vessel in which he was embarked for the West 
Indies was never heard from. Our Dr. West — 
there was another, also celebrated — wrote knotty 
treatises on Liberty and Necessity and such like 
trifles, and was never so well pleased as when he 
was up to his dear old eyes in a slough of theologi- 
cal dialectics. Scores of stories were told of his ab- 
sence of mind ; how, having dismounted to rest his 
old horse, the animal slipped the bridle, and the 
Doctor walked home with it over his shoulder, and 
with no suspicion that the creature was not behind. 
There was another story about his tucking away 
most of the table-cloth, under the impression that it 
was his own linen, and thus making havoc of the 
tea-things. But these tales are told of every eccen- 
tric mental absentee, and so far as they refer to the 
Doctor, I do not vouch for them. 

Among our lecturers, at a very much later time, 
was the Eev. John Pierpont, who came down from 
Boston to expound to us the mysteries of phrenol- 
ogy. He died not long ago, a wonderfully well- 
preserved old man, considering all the trials and 
troubles through which he had passed. His " Airs 
of Palestine," a fine poem of the kind, written in 
the sinewy Pope metre, and published in 1816, is 
before me as I write. He was one of the most pug- 
nacious of mortals, and lectured furiously in belialf 
of the new pseudo-science, surrounded by skulls, 
which he handled much less gingerly than Hamlet 
did that of Yorick. He invented stoves and razor- 



MEETING-HOUSES AND MINISTERS. 49 

strops ; he preached temperance at the Boston wine 
and spirit merchants, who constituted the wealthiest 
part of his congregation ; he would not be put down, 
nor go out until he got ready to go out, — and so he 
fought a ft'ood fioht to the end. Hundreds of Amer- 
lean youth learned to read in his " American First 
Class Book," and found their taste insensibly culti- 
vated by the excellence of its selections. Old men, 
who remembered it affectionately, have asked me 
wliere they could get a copy of the reading-book in 
which they were drilled in the far-off school-days. 



50 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 

The Old Public Schools. — The Days of the Rod. — An 
Old Schoolmate. — Joseph Lancaster. — Daniel Webster 
IN Court. — Wendell Phillips in Early Life. — The 
Days of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren. — The 
Massachusetts Democracy. — The Rich and Poor. — 
Dr. Orestes A. Brownson. — George Bancroft. 

IT is customary to speak of the public-school sys- 
tem of Massachusetts as coeval with the founda- 
tion of the province. The Bay State orators usually 
take that view of it, in well-chosen language, on 
public occasions. But the educational methods of 
all New England are mostly of modern growth. The 
original schools, of "svhich the Eev. Warren Burton 
has given a clever account in his " District School 
as It Was/' were cheaply managed and of limited 
curriculum. They taught arithmetic, reading, writ- 
ing, and spelling, with a little grammar. In the 
country their sessions by no means covered the whole 
year ; they were shabbily housed, and a master was 
employed only during the winter months ; if there 
was a summer term, it w^as confided to a " school- 
ma'am." But between 1820 and 1 830 great improve- 
ments were made, especially in the large town-s. In 
our own, the schools were graded, and the influence 



PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 51 

of Josepli Lancaster was observable at this time in 
some experiments designed to test tbe vahie of bis- 
monitorial plan. Lancaster was a Quaker, wliom I 
never saw, but of whom I heard a great deal said, — 
an Englishman, who came to this country, and who 
died in New York City in 1838. He was always in 
trouble, generally of the pecuniary sort* for he had 
no more notion of managing money than Mr. Skim- 
pole himself. He got rid of great sums, which were 
raised for him in England, Canada, and the United 
States. He was expensive in his habits of life, and I 
have been particularly told that he was a great eater . 
His j)lan of making the advanced pupils teach those 
of smaller acquirements is not at present much es- 
teemed, but it created a great noise in its day. My 
first school was Lancastrian, and what I particularly 
admired in it was its total abstinence from corporal 
punishment, which Lancaster regarded as a device 
of the devil himself, with its whole fearful apparatus 
of canes, cowhides, ferules, and birch rods. But 
there was fustigation enough in the next seminary 
which I attended, though it was kept by a Quaker. 
How he reconciled the principles of George Fox with 
his continual assaults upon our tender persons, I 
never could make out. No such cruel punishment is 
now known : it would not be tolerated ; tlie police 
and the courts would put a stop t(6 it sternly. It 
may be mentioned as a matter of history. The cor- 
rectional system whicli our teacher adopted was 
something like this : He would begin the morning 



52 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

school by reading a chapter in the Bible, to which 
we listened with more pain than piety, for we knew 
what was to follow. He would, after he had finished 
the reading, take from his desk a paper containing 
the names of yesterday's reprobates. These he called 
up, one by one, and vigorously feruled. The cruelty 
of it was not so much in the blows, though they were 
severe enough to occasion a great deal of howling, 
but in the fearful suspense in which he kept us, for 
nobody knew whether his name was upon the con- 
demned list or not. For mere boys, it was almost 
as bad as the rack for men. When I came to read 
in Montaigne of " the outcries of lads under execu- 
tion, and the thundering of pedagogues drunk with 
fury," I recognized at once the truth of the picture ; 
and I have often w^ondered whether Orbilius, the 
plagosus schoolmaster of Horace, had as heavy a 
hand as ours. Charles Lamb tells the story of a 
schoolmate who pleaded, when Old Boyer was about 
to torture him for not learning his lesson, that he 
had been " suffering from a lethargy " ; one of our 
boys, when asked why he refused to come up and be 
flogged, impudently replied that "he had the lap- 
stone fever," — a complaint not mentioned in any 
medical dictionary. The master immediately treated 
the patient after a method peculiarly his own, and 
effected a perfect cure in about thirty seconds. 

I went afterwards to a more advanced school, one 
reminiscence of which may be here introduced. 
The Ellis Bartlett, who w^as the father of the young 



PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 53 

man whose marriage with the Baroness Burdett- 
Coutts has lately been so much discussed, was one 
of my earliest associates and friends; and if the 
story of his son's marital experiences shall have 
any future interest, I may here say that there is no 
better blood in tlie world than the blood of the Old 
Colony, — now Plymouth CouDty, Massachusetts, — 
and of this my old friend, Ellis Bartlett, liad a plenty 
in his veins ; it is quite as good as that of the Bur- 
detts, and somev.diat better than that of the Dukes 
of St. Albans. I am in no position, as I write, for 
genealogical research, but I should be willing to 
proffer a small wager that the ancestors of Ellis 
Bartlett, if it could be determined, were among those 
stern and stalwart men who made matters unpleas- 
ant for the Stuarts at Naseby and at Marston Moor. 
I write this because the father of Mr. Bartlett, now 
so much mentioned, sat side by side with me years 
ago, in the High School in New Bedford, and helped 
me kindly in my first struggles with the dead lan- 
guages. A tall, raw-boned youth he was then, des- 
tined for Amherst College, and preparing for his 
examination. He was destined also, it was under- 
stood, for the sacred ministry in the Congregational 
Churcli ; and I believe that he was in some way, or 
was to be, a beneficiary of some educational society. 
We boys did n't know much about that, did not care 
much, for most of us were poor, and those who were 
rich were by no means the classical ornaments of 
our forms. What I remember mostly about my old 



54 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

friend is that he was an excellent scholar. It all 
comes back to me now, — how he, who was a sturdy 
student, took me, a little fellow, under his stout ri^-ht 
arm, with a Cape Cod strength in it, and led me up 
and down the bank of the Scamander and under the 
walls of windy Troy. 

He would not let me be idle. If I funked at reci- 
tation, lie took me into some quiet corner as soon 
as we were dismissed, and admonished me with the 
color upon his Puritan cheeks ; for he was then in 
dead earnest, whatever ideas of the best life might 
afterward come to him, For my own part, I thought 
him something wonderful. I recollect now that, in 
my opinion, he was the best writer of English prose 
upon this continent, and how I marvelled at the 
dextrous turn of his sentences, and was sure that 
when he came to preach in a pulpit of his own the 
sensation in the pews would be notable. So I was 
quite willing to enter into a scheme which once, 
during the play-hour, he broached to me. It was 
that we should meet during those summer days, at 
sunrise, at his own room, and there read Homer to- 
o-ether. There was romance enouoh in the suo-n-es- 

c o CO 

tion to tempt me into early rising ; and so, in the 
cool of the dawn, I went down to him with my little 
Homer and my big lexicon under my arm, and with 
thouo-hts of Achilles and Hector, of Priam and An- 
dromache, in my head. I am told that these sons 
of my early friend are excellent scholars, — better, 
doubtless, with their Oxford training, than we were ; 



PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 55 

but I wonder if they do not owe something of their 
success in England to a cleverness and a persistence 
inherited from their father. 

My friend Bartlett went to one college, and I 
went to another. Our paths of life, which ran so 
closely together at first, pretty soon widely diverged ; 
and we never saw much of each other afterward. 
We will not quarrel with youthful friendships 
because they last no longer : they go with the fine 
fragrance and the subtile vitality of the first years. 
My old associate preached a little, I think, after his 
graduation ; dropped out of preaching, as so many 
do ; dropped into commercial transactions of which 
I know little ; and died somewhere in middle age, 
leaving these children, of whom so much has been 
lately said, and especially this child, who has en- 
grossed for several months the attention of the 
British press and of a considerable portion of the 
British public. Something I have heard, in a pri- 
vate way, of those proposed nuptials. The mother 
of this young man, as I chance to know, was of an 
excellent Philadelphia family, not likely to be made 
arrogant even by an alliance with the heiress of a 
great London banker; for it must be remembered 
that the baroness has no particularly ancient blood 
in her, but comes mainly — and altogether so far as 
fortune is concerned — of plain merchants or bankers, 
like those of Boston or New York. What brought 
the widow of Ellis Bartlett with her boys to Lon- 
don, and how she became the intimate friend of the 



56 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Baroness Burdett-Coutts, I do not know, and do 
not care to know. So much, however, in the shift- 
ing vicissitudes of human affairs happened, with 
such aftercome as the Fates may vouchsafe. Both 
boys are clever, — one of them is in ParHament, 
thinking occasionally, I hope, of his father upon 
that stormy Plymouth corner of Massachusetts, 
fishing sometimes, and then selling the product of 
the fishery about the town. Member of Parliament, 
consort of a baroness, master of millions sterling, 
object of the jealousy of queen and aristocracy, 
talked of and written of, he would have no occasion 
to be ashamed of that father for whose sake I have 
written these lines. 

It was during my school-days that I first saw 
and heard a great man, known afterward as " the 
expounder of the Constitution," and characterized 
by his more enthusiastic admirers as " the godlike." 
In some respects he was not unlike some of the 
gods mentioned in Lempriere's Classical Dictionary ; 
but the title was not a fortunate one, and his 
political opponents made graceless jokes upon it. 
When I first saw Daniel Webster he was about 
fifty years old, and in the full perfection of that 
manly beauty which made him, of all the public 
men of his time, the noblest model for sculptors 
and the fittest subject for painters, before the art 
of portraiture was so nearly lost. He had not then 
been broken by disappointment nor bowed by hard 
"work. Every movement of his imposing figure. 



PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS, 57 

every glance of his eye, every expression of his 
countenance, betrayed a consciousness of power and 
of undaunted confidence in his own intellectual 
abilities. He was employed in a somewhat singu- 
lar case, and came to our town to argue it. A young 
man of fortune, who had killed himself by hard 
drinking, had, before his death, given a number of 
promissory notes, the payment of which w^as dis- 
puted by the executor, for whom Mr. Webster was 
retained. The trial created great public interest, 
and the court-room was crowded to repletion. Mr. 
Webster was at that time the most popular man in 
Massachusetts ; his noble speech in the Senate, 
made in 1830, — perhaps the noblest which he ever 
uttered, — was still freshly remembered. I believe 
that there was nothing wdiich he could then have 
asked of his fellow-citizens in his adopted State, 
which they would not gladly have granted him, — 
either office, money, or the most complete deference 
to his opinions. When he is charged with arro- 
gance and wdtli a spirit of dictation, I think that 
this should be considered. The feeling which led 
Massachusetts, solitary and alone, to give him her 
electoral vote in 1836, changed very slowly, but 
alas ! very surely, as questions came up which 
tested so severely his statesmanship and political 
integrity. But at the time of which I am writing, 
he was the idol of the Massachusetts people. So 
my chance of getting into the court-room to hear 
his argument was limited; but his of getting in to 



58 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

make it, at one moment, did not seem to be much 
better. I was just behind him, and remember how 
i gazed with reverence at the two brass buttons 
upon tlie back of -his blue coat. I recall nothing of 
his argument save one effective point which he 
made. A witness for the plaintiff, who was also 
a partner in the alleged conspiracy to defraud the 
maker of the notes, had been compelled to admit, 
under Mr, Webster's rigorous cross-examination, 
that they had agreed " to fling their chances to- 
gether." When he came to this point in his speech 
to the jury, the orator's eyes flashed, his nostrils 
dilated, while, with a significant gesture and in a 
loud voice, he exclaimed, " They agreed to fling 
their chances together ; and they would be flung to- 
gether out of any court of justice in Christendom ! " 
I recall an anecdote of Mr. Webster connected 
with this very trial, which was told me by Mr. 
Charles Henry Warren, who was associated with 
him in the case. There had been so much delay 
in its progress that Mr. Webster, who wanted to be 
back in Boston to entertain a dinner-party upon a 
day which had been fixed, lost his patience, and 
repeatedly declared that he would not argue the 
case at all. They went home to dinner, during 
which Mr. Webster remained silent and gloomy. 
At the end of the repast, he came back to the sub- 
ject : " Tell your client, Mr. AYarren," he said, " that 
I shall not argue this case." Then the blood of all 
the Warrens, which was quite as good as the blood 



PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 59 

of all the Websters, was aroused. " Mr, Webster," 
said the judge, " my client is your client, and if you 
have any messages to send to him, you may send 
them by your own bootblack." Mr. Webster gave 
a great start, looked fiercely into the fire for about 
ten minutes, and then, jumping up, with a smile, 
said, " Charley, is n't it about time to go into 
court ? " And into court they went, and Mr. Web- 
ster did stay to argue the case, and won it, though 
tlie verdict was afterward set aside. 

Massachusetts, in earlier times, was hardly ever 
in accord with the General Government, but its 
opposition to the Jackson and Van Buren adminis- 
trations was particularly bitter and persistently 
unbroken. It was intensified by traditions of old 
quarrels with the Washington powers, which, though 
long allayed, had still left a root of bitterness. 
There was a trace of this in the first address which 
I heard Mr. Wendell Phillips deliver, — a Fourth 
of July oration given in our town just after he left 
the university, I believe in 1831. When he stood 
up in the pulpit I thought him the handsomest man 
I had ever seen ; when he began to speak, his 
elocution seemed the most beautiful to which I had 
ever listened, and I was sure that the orations of 
Cicero, which I had just begun to thumb, were 
given to the S. P. Q. R with much smaller effect. 
Even then the great orator of the Abolitionists was 
an admirable speaker ; nor did he, tliough scarcely 
past his majority, lack the grace and force of Ian- 



60 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

guage ^vitli wliicli the whole country has since 
become familiar ; there was, beside, a fresh and 
youthful enthusiasm which could not last forever. 
He had then all the pride of State feeling, which he 
had probably inherited from his Federal ancestors, 
and I remember one expression which fell from his 
lips, wliich, in the light of his subsequent career, 
is a little curious. He was speaking of the political 
history of the State, and of its frequent isolation in 
politics, and electrified us all by exclaiming, " The 
star of Massachusetts has shone the brighter for 
shining alone ! " I suspect that even then Mr. 
Phillips's Federal relations were in rather an un- 
certain condition. 

The opposition of Massachusetts to the Jackson 
and Van Buren administrations was peculiar in one 
respect. The Whigs claimed all the decency, refine- 
ment, wealth, and cultivation of the State, if not of 
the United States. Governor John H. Clifford, when 
a young man in the Legislature, imprudently spoke 
of the Democrats of the town which he represented 
as " poor in character and meagre in numbers." It 
was one of those unfortunate speeches frequently 
made by politicians, which are easily remembered, 
and become stereotyped v/eapons to be used on awk- 
ward occasions against their utterers. Whether 
Daniel Webster ever really did say that it was ne- 
cessary for the Whigs " to come down into the forum 
and take the people by the hand," I never could find 
out ; but a great many voters thought that he had 



PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 61 

said so, and voted against him on account of that re- 
mark whenever they had an opportunity. These 
words, which w^ere printed over and over again, in 
the largest of type, in all tlie Democratic newspapers, 
contain in themselves the substance of a great deal 
of the political discussion at that time. Some of 
the Democrats of Massachusetts — Bancroft, Brown- 
son, Eantoul — were thorough doctrinaires, and gave 
a philosophical turn to their speeches which puzzled 
and profoundly impressed their audiences. The idea 
was that the rich men were trying always and ma- 
liciously to get the better of the poor men, and that 
in these reprehensible designs the autocrats of Boston 
were particularly malignant. Some of these gentle- 
men w^ere practical enough in their views to hold 
profitable offices, and they w^ere charged, truly or 
falsely, with a wish to keep the party in the State 
" conveniently small," in order that their share of the 
loaves and fishes might be all the larger. Dr. Brown- 
son, then in the gall of radicalism and the bitterness 
of general dissatisfaction, held some situation, not 
lucrative enough to enrich him ; so did Mr. Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, another Democrat upon abstract princi- 
ples, whose chief service to the party consisted in 
sending, now and then, a delightful paper to '' The 
Democratic Eeview." Dr. Brownson could do good, 
slashing work, upon occasion ; and when he did not 
wander off into a perfect maze of speculation, he was 
an excellent stump-speaker. I heard him once raise 
a mighty roar of applause by defining a locofoco as 



62 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST 

"a man always carrying his own light." He was 
publishing then the first series of his Quarterly 
Eeview, — a very different work from the last series 
of that periodical, issued after he became a Catholic. 
He discussed the sub-treasury and other questions 
in the light of the eclectic philosophy ; and, in spite 
of all he knew of the Democratic party in New 
York and jSTew Hampshire and elsewhere, he always 
persisted in speaking of it as a party of advanced 
religious views and of a specially illuminated char- 
acter. It is possible that he may have known what 
he meant, but that was more than could be always 
affirmed with truth of his hearers. He said once, in 
discussing some Whig pamphlet: "H this is the 
best answer which the AVhigs of Massachusetts can 
make to an exposition of Democratic principles, they 
had better set their houses in order, for the day of 
their departure is at hand. The people are weary of 
this eternal cant and of this eternal absence of liv- 
ing principle and of manly thought." This sounded 
beautifully ; but it really meant that Mr. Henshaw 
or Mr. Bancroft ought to be collector of the port of 
Boston, or that Mr. Van Buren ought to follow Gen- 
eral Jackson in the presidency. What did the Gal- 
lios of New York, the Silas Wrights, the Mings, the 
Mike Walshes, and the Levi D. Slams care for these 
thing^s ? I think that even Mr. Van Buren must 
have laughed a little in his sleeve at the astonishing 
way in which his Massachusetts philosophers de- 
fended him. 



PEDAGOGUES AND POLITICS. 63 

]\Ir. Bancroft was another Massachusetts Demo- 
crat of the doctrinaire school. He made a great deal 
of money in the Boston Custom House, for an office 
like his meant a fortune in those days. I do not 
think that he much cared to deliver stump speeches ; 
but he had no choice. Every Democratic office- 
holder who could speak, and would not speak, was 
made to speak. Mr. Hawthorne, who could no more 
speak than jump over a wide river, was of course 
excused. Mr. Bancroft brought the rhetoric of his 
History to the platform. He was ornate, gilded, and 
occasionally flaming. "Whatever he might be dis- 
cussing, — and people did not discuss much save the 
sub-treasury in those times, — he seldom deigned to 
descend from his stilts. He had a favorite way of 
beginning these election harangues. He would look 
with an expression of astonishment at the audience, 
and exclaim, with the gesture of Hamlet at the first 
sight of the ghost, " This vast assemblage might well 
appall me ! " This impressed those who had never 
heard it more than twice before, and it had the fur- 
ther effect of giving the audience aforesaid a good 
conceit of its own proportions. I have said that Mr. 
Bancroft could never get off his stilts, but occasion- 
ally he relaxed a little his stately dignity. He was 
speaking one night of the great Whig procession in 
Boston in 1840. It undoubtedly did rain while the 
Whig army was marching to Bunker Hill ; and ]\Ir. 
Bancroft improved the circumstance with a surpris- 
ing mixture of altitudinousness and familiarity. 



64 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

" ' We appeal to Heaven/ " lie said, " was written 
upon the impious banner. Heaven heard the ap- 
peal, and sent down upon tlie throng the nastiest 
shower of the season ! " Mr. Bancroft's audience 
could understand this better than his long disserta- 
tions upon the progress of the Democratic principle 
during the eighteenth century in Europe and Amer- 
ica ; and as he was not averse to applause, he went 
back to his Custom House contented, as he had good 
reason to be. 

The commercial troubles (to go back a little) 
wliich General Jackson's financial policy in remov- 
ing the deposits was supposed to have occasioned, 
so affected our own town that one business house 
after another toppled over, and all was consternation. 
Under these circumstances it was wisely suggested 
that a delegation of three persons should be sent to 
Washins^ton to remonstrate w^ith General Jackson, 
and persuade that most easily persuaded person to 
reconsider his action. An old Quaker merchant, who 
w^as among the insolvents, nominated himself, an- 
other merchant, remarkable for long-wdndedness, and 
a tliird for the ease with wliich lie wept on all occa- 
sions. " James," he said, " can do all the talking ; 
John can do all the crying ; and 1 11 go as a monu- 
ment of the times." Whether General Jackson 
could have resisted such a trio as this, I do not 
know ; but as all sorts of delegations, w^th much 
talking and crying, appealed to him in vain, I sus- 
pect that the sufferers did not lose much when our 
project was abandoned. 



OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 65 



CHAPTER V. 

OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS AND OEATORS. 

The Whig Paety previous to 1840. — Methods and Dis- 
cipline OF the Democratic Party. — Amos Kendall's 
CiRCULAK. — Richard Haughton.— The Boston Atlas and 
Mr. Webster. — The Beginning of Henry Wilson's 
Political Career.— Edward Everett. — Alexander H. 
Everett.— Eufus Choate. 

DURING the warm political contests which pre- 
ceded the great Whig victory of 1840, the 
Whig party was, with all its numbers and ability, in 
a disorganized condition, lacking discipline, concerted 
action, unanimity even of opinion, and especially 
harmony as to candidates for the presidency. The 
friends of Mr. Webster and of Mr. Clay were so 
governed by personal admiration that they formed 
hardly more than personal factions. Each of these 
statesmen thought, most erroneously, that he had 
" claims " upon the presidency, as if, under our 
Constitution, any man could have such ; and so, 
once in four years, he set his squadrons in the field, 
and just as often they went down to the dust be- 
fore the serried phalanx of the Democracy, then the 
most thoroughly compact party which this republic 
had ever seen, — more compact, perhaps, than any 
which it has seen since. For it believed in what 

5 



66 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

John Quiiicy Adams felicitously called " the cohe- 
sive power of public plunder." It held all the 
national offices of emolument in an iron grip, and 
disdained to even affect any secret of the uses 
which it constantly made of them. During the hot 
battle of 1840, before he surrendered the office of 
postmaster-general to go personally into the field, 
Amos Kendall issued a confidential circular-letter, 
which I saw and read, calling upon his deputy post- 
masters, and upon others in place, to do everything 
in their power to promote the re-election of Mr. Yan 
Buren. Coming from such an official source, writ- 
ten by such a man, and sent to such persons, this 
letter was in itself significant and suggestive, but 
the language which Mr. Kendall saw fit to use was 
still more so. " I shall take care," he said, " that 
the high-minded and ]3atriotic men who do this 
service shall have no cause to regret their exertions." 
These words may be considered ambiguous, but 
those who read them understood them well enough. 
My only wonder is that, in the existing state of 
political morality, there should have been about 
such general orders from headquarters any affecta- 
tion of privacy. 

The canvass of 1840 owed its peculiarities, and 
they were many, to a general popular dissatisfaction. 
The Democrats had been in power for twelve years 
and had contracted many of those vices into which 
a consciousness of great strength and prolonged 
continuance in office will usually betray any party. 



OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. G7 

It is only fair to ascribe the nomination of General 
Harrison to the tact and foresiglit of Piichard Haugh- 
ton, the editor of " The Boston Atlas," and to the 
vigorous way in which his plans were supported in 
that newspaper by Piichard Hildreth. It is curious 
that the cherished aspirations of Mr. Webster should 
have been thus bliglited in the house of his friends. 
But Mr. Haugliton was a man, as he has been de- 
scribed to me, of remarkable energy of character; 
and moreover he was not a Boston man, for he had 
received his political and newspaper training in 
Kev/ York. He was not, himself, much of a writer, 
but he had the faculty of getting and of keeping 
about him clever men. The strono; articles in which 
Mr. Webster was thrust aside as a candidate, and 
General Harrison put prominently in his place, 
were mainly written by Mr. Hildreth, but undoubt- 
edly they were inspired by Mr. Haughton and care- 
fully revised by him. He did what I think few 
editors would think it necessary to do now : he took 
a proof-sheet of the first article, in which he indi- 
cated the course which he intended to pursue, to 
Mr. AVebster himself. There w^as a stormy inter- 
view, of wdiich I have heard several versions, but I 
shall follow the tradition current in " The Atlas " 
office when I was one of the editors of that news- 
paper. When Mr. Webster had read the article his 
rage w^as boundless, and I have heard it intimated 
that he ordered Mr. Ilauditon out of his house, — a 
command which the man was hardly likely to heed 



68 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

until he had said what he had come to say. He 
waited for Mr. Webster to grow calmer. He then 
set forth the political situation with great plainness 
of speech. " You cannot be President," he said ; 
" but you can have an office quite as important and 
honorable ; you can be Secretary of State. This 
article is to be published to-morrow morning. You 
know how it will irritate your friends in Boston. 
I do not ask you to say to them that you approve 
of it, nor that you disapprove of it. I merely ask 
you to say nothing." ]\fr. AYebster was finally per- 
suaded that this course would be at least the most 
dignified. So when "The Atlas " appeared on that 
eventful day, great was the commotion in State 
Street, down which ^Ir. Webster walked with more 
than his usual stately dignity. Out rushed respect- 
ability from many doors : " Mr. Webster, have you 
seen ' The Atlas ' ? " cried one. " Have you read that 
shameful article ? " asked another. Peoj)le who saw 
the scene have told me that Mr. Webster's bearing 
under this fire of questions was magnificent. "I 
have not seen the article," he said, " nor do I care 
to see it. I suppose that the editor of the news- 
paper expresses his opinions, as he has a right to 
do." This was precisely what Mr. Haughton wished 
Mr. Webster to say. The great man had taken 
himself out of the way ; and I do not suppose that 
the editor of " The Atlas " would at that moment 
have given anybody sixpence to insure the nomina- 
tion of General Harrison — perhaps not a shilling 



OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND ORA TORS. 69 

to secure his election. Mr. Webster swallowed tins 
indignity, as lie did others, when resentment would 
have cost him too much, and made more than one 
speech during the campaign, though none of them 
were particularly good ones. 

Massachusetts gracefully acquiesced in the in- 
evitable and gave General Harrison an enormous 
majority. But only the year before she had suffered 
what to her was the mortification of seeing Marcus 
]\Ioi-ton, who had from time immemorial been the 
Democratic candidate for governor, elected by a 
majority of one, and the Whig supremacy in the 
State for the first time shaken. Governor Morton, 
by a singular coincidence, several years after, was 
again elected by a majority of one. Once there was 
a delay of the train running to Boston, and the 
governor, consulting his watch, said impatiently, 
" I suppose that we shall get in by one." " Well, 
yes. Governor," said Attorney-General Clifford ; 
" your Excellency usually gets in by one." In the 
vigorous campaign which followed General Harri- 
son's nomination, the State furnished its full quota 
of able speeches, while " The Atlas " fired daily 
broadsides into the sinking ship of Van Buren with 
a vehemence which manifested itself in the constant 
use of capital letters and italics, and of words selected 
for their force rather than their dignity. There was 
a story that the young lawyers of Boston made 
sporadic forays into the rural districts in cowhide 
boots, felt hats, and homespun coats. We first 



70 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

beo-an to hear about that time of one Henry Wilson, 
a shoemaker, of the little town of J^atick ; he was, 
indeed, usually announced as " the Natick Cobbler." 
The Whigs, laboring under an imputation of aristo- 
cratic feeling, found him a particularly useful stump 
speaker. It was the beginning of a career of which 
something may be said in these papers hereafter. 
Mr. Wilson was anything but a speaker formed in 
the school of Edward Everett, whose rhetoric and 
elocution the young Whigs were so fond of imitat- 
ing, and who was in every respect an excellent 
model for those who thought models to be necessary 
at all, as Mr. Henry Wilson most decidedly did not. 
^Nothing could be finer than Mr. Everett's art ; 
voice, gesture, matter, manner, all were perfect. 
Critics complained that he was too perfect, that 
he had not the artem celare artem. It was all very 
beautiful while one listened to it, and I do not mean 
to say that it was not also beautiful to remember ; 
but perhaps there was in this fine speaker's oratory 
a lack of robustness and weighty solidity. Yet 
nothing could be more fascinating than the skill 
with which he advanced to the climax, nothing 
more magnificent than tlie climax itself. Some- 
times it was so superb that it fairly lifted the people 
off their feet ; while being delivered with absolute 
dramatic propriety, its glitter seemed to be warmth, 
and its rhythmic beauty provoked a thunder of cheers. 
Anybody w^ho will look over the printed speeches 
of 'Mr. Everett will easily discover the passages to 



OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 71 

which I refer, — the billows which roll and swell 
with a well-managed crescendo, nntil the nintli of 
them melts along the shore. The first speech which 
I heard Mr. Everett ^lake was in belialf of Bunker 
Hill Monument, — a shaft which went up slowly- 
through lack of money, and made necessary a great 
expenditure of eloquence. This was perhaps as 
nearly an improvised address as Mr. Everett ever 
made in his life, for he was called upon rather un- 
expectedly ; yet there were no flaws in it, and no 
traces of the hesitation of extempore. His descrip- 
tion of the battle was extremely terse and animated ; 
and long years after, when I was called upon to 
write an account of it, I was not easy until I had 
sent a long distance for a printed report of this well- 
remembered speech. Mr. Everett was a man w]io 
never did anything badly or carelessly ; and this 
address, given in a small town to a small audience, 
was just as fine in its way as his great oration upon 
Washington. Indeed, I do not remember any his- 
torical American who could do so many and such 
various things so well. A professor of Greek, a 
clergyman, a minister of the gospel, both represen- 
tative and senator in Congress, a governor, an am- 
bassador, a college president, a secretary of state, an 
admirable lecturer, a miscellaneous and clever writer 
for " The North American Eeview " as well as for 
Bonner's " Ledger," in early life a maker of elegant 
verses, — what was there wliich he did not do, and 
what was there which he did not do w^ell ? With a 



72 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

consciousness^of his own miscellaneous capacities, it 
is not strange that he manifested a passion for the 
presidency, — that infirmity which has so surely and 
so sorely afflicted so many of Qur public characters 
whether able or mediocre. Mr. Everett in the House 
of Representatives, when it was full of first-rate men, 
was one of the most effective and persistent oppo- 
nents of the Jackson administration. I recall a 
passage in one of his speeches, which I declaimed 
in school soon after it was delivered, and which 
is worth quoting as a specimen of Mr. Everett's 
manner. General Jackson had charged his Secretary 
of the Treasury, who had refused to remove the 
deposits, with being bribed by the bank ; and Mr. 
Everett, upon this, exclaimed wdth elegant indigna- 
tion, " I believe if any king of England, of the 
House of Brunswick, had uttered such an accusa- 
tion against a first Lord of the Treasury, the day on 
which he uttered it would have been the last of his 
reign. He would have been hurried from the 
palace to the Tower, and from the Tower to the 
scaffold ; or, if measures had been adopted more 
consonant with the spirit of the age, Parliament 
would have resolved that the royal intellect was 
impaired, and the unhappy monarch w^ould have 
lingered out the remainder of his days in the gloom- 
iest haunts and darkest recesses of Windsor Castle." 
I give the passage from memory : the reader will 
notice the climax, the peculiarity of Mr. Everett's 
rhetoric, of which I have already spoken. Of this 



OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND OR A TOPS. 73 

remarkable man I shall have something more to 
say in another chapter. 

Few people, save professed political students, now 
remember, perhaps, Mr. Alexander H. Everett, a 
younger brother of Edward Everett, a gentleman of 
great learning and talent, who went from advanced 
Whiggery to advanced Democracy during General 
Jackson's second term. Though he held at various 
times important offices, mainly diplomatic, he can 
hardly be considered a fortunate man. What drove 
him into the Democratic party I do not know ; but 
I remember that there was a feeling in Boston that 
he had somewhat lost caste. He had not the uiii- 
form success of his brother, and I suspect that he 
lacked his brother's cautious prudence. He had 
great chances, his work suggests a robust and sin- 
ewy nature ; but somehow he did not get on. His 
knowledge of European literature of the eighteenth 
century was consummate ; and I heard him deliver 
an admirable oration upon that topic before the Phi- 
lermenian Society of Brown University, in 1837, full 
of lively portraiture and sound and graceful criticism. 
In " The North American Review " he defended the 
United States against the sneering misrepresentations 
of a class of British tourists, which fortunately has 
become extinct. I mention particularly his review 
of Hamilton's "Men and Manners in America," a 
wonderful piece of recrimination, because I have been 
told that Hamilton himself read it with anything 
but satisfaction, and found its sharp dissection not 



74 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

at all soothing to his Scotch temper. The cockney 
travellers — Trollope, Fiddler, Hamilton, and the rest 
of them — tried us sorely, for our skins were then 
thinner, and our self -constituted judges shallower. 
We may take a little honest pride in the fact that 
nohody writes such books about us now. 

Mr. Eufus Choate was a prominent political Mas- 
sachusetts figure in the campaign of 1840. He was 
then forty -two years old, in the full flush of intel- 
lectual if not of physical vigor ; he was sent to the 
Senate, to take the jjlace of Mr. Webster there, but 
I believe it was admitted that he did not develop 
political ability at all commensurate with his repu- 
tation as a legal advocate. He had not exhibited 
much prudence as a representative in Congress in 
1832 ; and in the Senate he was, upon one occasion 
at least, rather harshly treated by Mr. Clay. At the 
end of his term, in 1846, he was glad to go back to 
his law books and the Boston bar. Opinions may 
differ respecting his attainments in the science of 
law : hard-headed old judges like Chief Justice Shaw, 
perhaps, did not think so highly of them as did Mr. 
Choate's clients, rescued by him from the extreme 
penalties of the law ; but in spite of gTave faults of 
taste, the brilKancy of Mr. Choate, his fervor, pas- 
sion, and verbal opulence put him in the front rank 
of rhetoricians. Unfortunately, he has left little or 
nothing to justify the great reputation which he at- 
tained while living. Posterity cannot see his flash- 
ing eye, nor mark his dramatic action, nor hear the 



OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 75 

wonderful intonations which colored and intensified 
his elocution. His fame will experience something 
of the actor's ill-fortune. But no man was more 
talked of in his time, which already seems so far off, 
— his habits, his curious learning, his great power of 
application, his winning way with juries, his classi- 
cal tastes, and his astonishing handwriting, the most 
illegible which I ever saw. I recall one occasion 
when anybody who could have read one of his let- 
ters would have been entitled to a handsome gratu- 
ity. I was studying law in the office of the Hon. 
Thomas D. Eliot, the well-known member of Con- 
gress. There was a case in which both Mr. Choate 
and Mr. Eliot were engaged ; and the former sent 
down to his junior instructions for making an im- 
mediate motion of some importance. Not a man in 
the ofiice could read the letter, — not Mr. Eliot, nor 
Mr. John A. Kasson, his partner, nor any one of the 
students. Here was an unpleasant dilemma ! A 
letter to Mr. Choate, asking for explanation, was sug- 
gested ; but time pressed, and there was no certainty 
that the answer would be any more readable. At 
last, somebody proposed a telegraphic dispatch, with 
a request for an immediate reply. It was argued 
conclusively that the electric fluid didn't write 
splatter-dash hieroglyphics. The plan succeeded 
perfectly, and the motion was made in time. The 
velocity of Mr. Choate's elocution was equally the 
despair of the reporters. Leslie Coombs, of Kentucky, 
once said to me after one of his wild speeches, 



76 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

" Young man, you do not intend to try to report me, 
I hope." " I shall try," was the answer. " You had 
better not," he responded ; " you might as well try 
to report red-hot balls ! " Mr. Choate's speeches 
w^ere suggestive of the same glowing ammunition. 
He was the despair of the cleverest phonographers. 
He once, in Faneuil Hall, quoted from " Othello " the 
well-known words, " lago, the pity of it, lago," 
and Dr. Stone, one of the best phonographic report- 
ers in the country, somehow got it down, "0, I 
argue the pity of it, I argue," and so it was printed 
to the astonishment of the town. Odd stories were 
told of Mr. Choate's vehemence. He was once op- 
posing, before a legislative committee, a project for 
giving the Boston and Providence Eailway Company 
liberty to trespass upon that sacred spot, the Com- 
mon. Mr. Choate drew a beautiful picture of that 
riis in urbe. "Here," he said, "when the vernal 
breezes blow, you may now walk with your wives 
andfchildren, and drink in all the charms of reawak- 
ing N'ature. But grant the prayer of the petition- 
ers, gentlemen, and what will you have ? The 
scream of locomotives, the rattle of trains, the whir 
of machinery, — Stromboli, Vesuvius, ^tna, Coto- 
paxi, — hell itself, gentlemen ! " There was a man 
who had skill enough to give this in precisely Mr. 
Clioate's manner; and it never failed to convulse 
the company with laughter. 

Mr. Choate was the last of the orators of the florid 
school. There is no lawyer living who would dare 



OLD POLITICS, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 77 

to address a jury in the dramatic way which he af- 
fected. He piled epithet upon epithet, and permit- 
ted himself a prodigality of adjectives. He sacrificed 
everything for immediate impression. He appeared 
to me to be living always in a fever, to be inces- 
santly eager for display, and under the spell of some 
Demosthenean reminiscence. If he could, now and 
then, have been as solidly calm as his friend, Mr. 
Webster, was, except upon unusual occasions ; if he 
could just a little have abated the impression of im- 
mediate advocacy ; if he could have lost a part of 
his nervous energy, and acquired more of genuine 
muscular strength ; if he could liave left his Greek 
and Latin at home, and carried into the forum far 
less of the Jesuitical idea of conscience, — he might 
have been a greater, as I am sure that he would have 
a happier, man. 



78 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTER YI. 

WHIGS, EEPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 

The Campaign of 1840. — General Harrison and John 
Tyler. — Mr. Webster in the Tyler Cabinet. — Caleb 
CusniNG, — Fletcher Webster. — Robert C. Winthrop. 

THE campaign of 1840 ought not, perhaps, to be 
dismissed with the brief allusion made to it in 
the last chapter. There was never anything like it 
before in the history of the country, and probably 
there will never be anything like it again. It is 
customary to regard it as an instance of popular en- 
thusiasm artfully and artificially stimulated; as a 
fever created and maintained by song and show ; as 
a delirium of drink (mainly hard cider) and of dem- 
agogical speeches. Though I used to think so my- 
self, I am satisfied that this view of the canvass is 
but a superficial one. The same methods have since 
been resorted to, and have failed more or less igno- 
miniously. They were tried in a feeble way in be- 
half of Henry Clay in 1844, but again there was a 
melancholy demonstration that the people were will- 
ing to do anything for that great man but vote for 
him. The Whig success in 1840 is to be attributed, 
I think, to the feeling, whether just or unjust, that 
the Van Buren administration had been utterly cor- 



WHIGS, REPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 79 

rupt. The people were weary of perpetual defalca- 
tions, and of a government carried on exclusively for 
the benefit of party. They hoped, too, that a polit- 
ical change would bring financial ease ; and certainly 
General Harrison, who was a good enough sort of a 
man, though by no means a brilliant one, was in- 
vested with a hundred mythical merits, — he was as 
virtuous as Cato, as great a general as Julius Caesar, 
and as patriotic as George Washington or John Ad- 
ams ; he was the Farmer of the West, he was the 
Hero of Tippecanoe. He was glorified in song, he 
was eulogized in speeches ; his name was emblazoned 
on a thousand banners, and his portrait carved on 
the buttons and breastpins of a continually increas- 
ing majority. When he was elected, a thunderous 
shout of exultation and gratitude went up to the 
skies, because we were to liave a man for President, 
and no longer a tricky and vulpine politician. " Little 
Yan" was sent ignominiously back to the rural 
shades of Kinderhook. ■ There never was such a 
victory, and there never was a victory of which the 
fruits were such Dead Sea apples. The majority 
was enormous, but nothing came of it. General 
Harrison was inaugurated President March 4, 1841, 
and just one month from that time he lay dead in 
the White House, — all hopes blasted, all expecta- 
tions disappointed, all the future of the Whig party 
uncertain ! It was a terrible blow to the honest 
people who had voted for him conscientiously and 
hopefully. The prostrate Democratic party again 



80 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

lifted its head with a feeling that there were still 
other triumphs in store for it, that the emoluments 
of place had not departed from it forever. The 
South had its usual good fortune ; and a man was 
seated in the President's chair who was hereafter to 
be and to die a member of the Confederate Congress. 
In 1844 Mr. Calhoun was Secretary of State, and 
John Y. Mason was Secretary of tlie Navy. Texas 
was annexed March 1, 1845 ; and we then entered 
upon a period of our history which the present gen- 
eration well knows to have been singularly eventful. 
When Mr. Tyler began to demonstrate that, though 
elected as a Whig, he was, so far as he was anything, 
a stiff Virginia abstractionist, the consternation of 
those who had voted for him bordered ui3on the lu- 
dicrous. They began to nickname him " His Acci- 
dency " at once, and the refrain of " Tyler too " came 
back sarcastically from the Democrats in a somewhat 
insufferable way. When the Bunker Hill monument 
was dedicated in 1843, on the anniversary of the 
battle, I saw Mr. Tyler in a barouche in the proces- 
sion. I had heard of his nose often, and I recognized 
him by that feature, the proportions of which were 
appropriately monumental. In the crowd there was 
much pushing and elbowing to get a good view of 
the President. A man behind me, when he had suc- 
ceeded in doing so, exclaimed in a tone of anguish, 
" Good heavens ! is that the man we worked so hard 
to elect in 1840 ?" — a remark which was followed 
by a gTeat guffaw from the crowd. Mr. Tyler, like 



WHIGS, REPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 81 

Mr. Johnson in a similar predicament, was without 
any popular strength. He had one or two respectable 
men near him, but he could not make his adminis- 
tration respectable. There was gossip about the 
White House which even now I should not care to 
repeat. The President had lost the support of the 
Whigs, who had formally repudiated all responsibil- 
ity for his acts. The Democrats were willing enough 
to take office under him, but they never gave him 
any political assistance, and he got along in a hand- 
to-mouth way and as he could. He picked up and 
appointed to place some very surprising characters, 
never heard of before and never heard of since. Col- 
lectors and postmasters dropped down upon aston- 
ished localities which knew them not, and did not 
care to know them. There was a sour feeling every- 
where during the whole four years. The haste with 
which the Texas negotiation was hurried through 
at the very close of the Tyler administration was 
thought to be a little indecent. But of all the di- 
lemmas, there was none like the dilemma of the 
Whigs of Massachusetts ; for Mr. Webster, in spite 
of tlie vetoes, clung to the office of Secretary of State 
until the spring of 1843, though all his colleagues 
went out in the summer preceding. I am not sure 
that it was not then that Mr. Webster began dis- 
tinctly to lose his hold upon the affections and the 
respect of the State wliich has so honored him. He 
still retained place while liis party was definitely in 
opposition. In 1842 the Massachusetts Whigs were 



82 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

in a great deal of trouble and needed all the help of 
their men of name and standing. Mr. Webster would 
not help them at all, certainly not by resigning ; and 
when they were badly beaten they were a little out 
of humor with him, in spite of the glories of the Ash- 
burton Treaty. He was very stubborn ; there is some 
reason to believe that he was selfish, and did not care 
to give up a place which kept him in the line of suc- 
cession to the presidency, or at any rate in the public 
eye. Not long before the State election of 1842, in 
which the Whigs of Massachusetts were defeated, 
Mr. Webster made a speech in Faneuil Hall, whicli 
did not please them. He then and there avowed, in 
his large way, after stating his reasons for keeping 
office, that he was " a Whig, a Massachusetts Whig, 
a Taneuil Hall Whig " ; then, almost taking an atti- 
tude of defiance, — morally it was no less than that, 
— he said substantially, " If anybody proposes to 
put me out of the Whig party, let him try it, and 
we will see which goes out first ! " This was all 
very grand, only it did not alter the facts of the 
position. Mr, Webster knew well that the Whigs 
were in absolute opposition to the Tyler administra- 
tion, of which he was the most respectable and im- 
portant member ; he knew that the Whig party of 
the State was in great danger of defeat, partly in 
consequence of the unpopularity of its position in the 
matter of the Dorr Eebellion in Ehode Island ; he 
knew how much pain his course was giving to his 
best friends. The people of the State then began to 



WHIGS, REPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 83 

understand tliat tliere might be wide differences of 
opinion between themselves and their idol. It was 
the beginning of the end. 

Supported in the main only by a crowd of third- 
rate men whose advocacy was fatal, Mr. Tyler had 
in Caleb Gushing an advocate of great cleverness 
and undeniable accomplishments. This dextrous 
person always found his opportunity in factions, and 
never failed to improve unexpected chances. He 
w^as upon friendly terms, it will be remembered, 
afterwards, with President Johnson, under similar 
circumstances. He had bad luck and good luck, as 
such men are apt to have, but upon the whole he 
managed to be almost always in public employment, 
and to get along nearly as well as if the people had 
believed in his political honesty, which it must be 
admitted they never did. Tylerism effectually killed 
almost every other public man who professed it, but 
it did not kill him. The accidental President nomi- 
nated him as Secretary of the Treasury, and the 
Senate, of course, rejected him, whereupon he sailed 
away for China as commissioner, charged with the 
negotiation of a treaty, and with Mr. Fletcher Webster 
as his secretary of legation. People always said that 
this son of the great orator, who bore his excellent 
mother's maiden name, inherited an unusual share 
of his father's ability, but he was handicapped from 
the start partly by the paternal fame, wliich was 
great enough to crush him, and partly by certain 
peculiarities of character and conduct which were 



84 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

also inherited. Queer stories came from China about 
the American Commission ; but it is unnecessary, and 
it might be considered in bad taste and a violation of 
the rule cle mortuis, to repeat them here. Mr. Fletcher 
Webster slipped easily into the Democratic party, 
and the Democratic party put him into a good office, 
and took better care of him than he was capable of 
taking^ of himself He was a faithful follower, and 
balked at nothing which the party demanded. When 
the ruffian Brooks nearly murdered Charles Sumner 
on the floor of the Senate, Mr. Fletcher Webster said, 
in a speech, that if Mr. Sumner " would indulge in 
such attacks as that which he made upon Senator 
Butler, Mr. Brooks's uncle, he ought at least to take 
the precaution of wearing an iron pot on his head.'' 
Colonel Webster was probably a little sorry for this 
infamous remark when the Young Eepublicans of 
Boston stretched a line across Hanover Street, from 
which depended an iron pot with, over it, the inscrip- 
tion, " Fletcher Webster's Congressional Hat." Bos- 
ton, or the better part of it, sick of compromises and 
of experimental Union-saving, was then in no mood 
for such jests. Those who saw Charles Francis Ad- 
ams in Quincy, a night or two after that shameful 
assault, at a meeting called to express the public 
opinion of it, would have understood something of 
the Eevolutionary wrath which boiled in his grand- 
father's veins. All the coldness of Mr. Adams's na- 
ture was turned to a red heat, and so full was he of 
righteous anger that it could hardly be expressed in 



WHIGS, REPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 85 

words. There were those who said tliat it was tlie 
liatred of the South, which was traditional in tlie 
family ; but whatever it was, it seemed exceedingly 
natural and wholesome in those awakening days. I 
saw old Josiah Quincy, whose statue they have just 
set up in Boston, when, at the Eoxbury line, that 
venerable man, surrounded by an enormous crowd, 
welcomed the outraged senator home after his partial 
recovery, and told him how, in 1824, he had greeted 
Lafayette as the guest of the municipality upon that 
very spot. Those who marked the emotion with 
which Mr. Sumner was received upon that day 
might, without much prophetic inspiration, have pre- 
dicted the stormy struggle which was not far off. 

Mr. Gushing, of whom it is necessary to say 
something more, was never a popular man in Mas- 
sachusetts, nor do I think that he cared much for 
popularity. He had other arts than those of the 
demagogue, which served his purpose quite as well. 
I ought, however, to say that in Newburyport he 
was held in great local esteem, and if there be any 
credit in the steady attachment of one's neighbors, 
Mr. Gushing was entitled to it. The town was 
always ready to send him to the State Legislature 
whenever he was ready to go there. When it be- 
came a city, as a particular honor, it made him its 
first mayor. Politics, however, had nothing to do 
with this, nor with liis appointment as a judge of 
the supreme court of the State, — a place which he 
did not hold long. His career in Mexico did him 



86 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

no good : a single line in James Eussell Lowell's 
" Biglow Papers " blasted all his military laurels. 
The soldiers who served under him did not love him ; 
there was talk of cruel and unusual punishments, 
and a story of one private who threatened a fierce 
revenge if ever opportunity should present itself. 
There were other scandals, early and late ; but the 
man kept on, and was always employed, particu- 
larly in difficult business, because he worked so 
well. But when he failed to become chief justice 
of the United States, I am afraid that there was 
not much regret in Massachusetts. It was admitted 
that he would have made an able judge, but the 
nomination was withdrawn. The fact requires no 
comment. 

The conservatism of Boston died hard, if, indeed, 
it be altogether dead to-day. Its representatives 
still surviving have taken refuge in the Democratic 
party, in historical societies, and in benevolent cor- 
porations. There are among them men whom it is 
impossible not to respect, and whose inability longer 
to participate in public affairs is something which 
the public has real reason to regret. I know that 
when the Ptcpublican party was in the process of 
formation in Massachusetts, it was thought to be 
exceedingly desirable that the adhesion of certain 
gentlemen of deserved eminence should be secured ; 
and that every effort consistent with self-respect 
was made to secure it. They had their chance then, 
and if, either from prejudice or lingering personal 



WHIGS, REPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 87 

animosities, they failed to improve it, the Eepub- 
lican leaders were not to blame. Mr. Henry Wilson 
was a man who unquestionably expected and in- 
tended to have his full share of what are unpleas- 
antly called " the spoils " ; and when he had set his 
heart upon anything, he usually obtained it sooner 
or later, for his persistency was great as well as his 
natural capacity for public affairs. I never thought 
him to be a particularly scrupulous, but I always 
considered him a fair man, whose word usually 
required few grains of allowance ; and I have heard 
him tw^enty times regret that certain distinguished 
members of the old Whig party would not accept 
the situation and take the place to which their 
talents and private character entitled them in the 
councils of the new party. Principle apart, he 
thought tliey w^ere losing great chances, as indu- 
bitably they were. In old times, Mr. Wilson had 
been associated with them in politics as a Whig ; 
he had fought with them many a hard battle, won 
or lost ; and he did not love the Massachusetts 
Democrats at all, often as he consented to coalesce 
with them. Once when there was a conference of 
Liberal Whigs, who saw plainly enough that the 
days of Whiggery were over, and who ^vere anxious 
that there should be a party embodying the new 
opinions and equal to the new occasions, a highly 
respectable gentleman, whom it is unnecessary to 
name, said, " I should like to see Mr. Henry Wilson, 
and talk with him about this matter." I do not 



88 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

know why, but it was then generally thought that 
nothing could be effected without the co-operation 
of this same highly respectable gentleman ; and hap- 
pening to know where Mr. Wilson could at that 
moment be found, I took the liberty of going after 
him, and of persuading him to join the company. 
But nothing came of it. Mr. Wilson talked in a 
large, free way, which gave me a deep and abiding 
impression of his tact and good judgment; and the 
other gentleman (of respectability) said in reply 
that he should like to have " some evidence of the 
repentance of Mr. Wilson and his associates." After 
that there was not much to be profitably said, but 
I did venture to ask if it was expected that the old 
Conscience Whigs would stand in sheets at the 
church-door, candle in hand, and say, "We have 
erred and strayed like lost sheep." Because I fur- 
ther modestly suggested if such were the condition 
o*f a union of the Conscience with the Compromise 
Whigs that the day of such a cordial reconciliation 
was probably far distant. 

Mr. Eobert C. Winthrop was among those Whig 
gentlemen whose co-operation in the formation of 
the Republican party was eagerly desired. He had 
been the idol of the young Whigs of Massachusetts ; 
he was a man of fine abilities ; he was of ancient 
family ; his political talents were of the first order, 
if only he could have been persuaded to give them 
a chance ; he had been Speaker of the State and of 
the National House of Eepresentatives ; his man- 



WHIGS, REPUBLICANS, AND DEMOCRATS. 89 

ners were excellent ; his character was unspotted. 
He does not think so even now, but I am persuaded 
that if he had followed the Liberal Whigs of Massa- 
chusetts, upon tlie breaking up of parties, there was 
no place, however high, to which he might not have 
been honorably called. When I last saw him, years 
ago, he was good enough to regret that our political 
paths had diverged ; and he was also kind enough 
to express the hope that in time we might be to- 
gether again, he of course, as I well understood, in 
his higher place, and I in my own. When Mr. 
Sumner was assaulted, everybody said, " This is 
Mr. Winthrop's opportunity." He was asked to 
preside over the meeting to be held immediately in 
Faneuil Hall to express the sympathy and indigna- 
tion of the people, and he declined to do so, after 
considerable importunity, though it was no greater 
than the occasion demanded. I thought then that 
he was losing the best chance of his life, and I have 
not changed my opinion. Had he acceded to that 
request, made with affectionate earnestness, his 
public career, begun so brilliantly, would hardly 
have ended so soon, and so greatly to the regret of 
those who respected and admired him.* 

* Mr. Eobert C. AVinthrop, upon reading tins passage as origi- 
nally published, was kind enough to assure me, by a personal 
letter, that he was not invited to preside at the Sumner meeting 
in 1856. I am anxious to fall into no historical misreport ; and 
my own memory against Mr. Winthrop's positive statement 
should, of course, go for nothing. My impression in writing was 
that Mr. Justice Sanger saw Mr. Winthrop ; and although he 



90 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

may not have asked him to preside at the meeting, did ask him 
to participate in its proceedings. I am sure of the feeling that we 
all experienced, as we were gathered together in the office of my 
late friend, Colonel Ezra Lincoln. There was a desire that Mr. 
Winthrop should be present at the meeting ; and that desire was 
painfully disappointed. I can only regret that his physical in- 
firmities should have called him at that important moment from 
Boston, and I still think that he lost his opportunity. 



UNIVERSITY DAYS. 91 



CHAPTER VII. 

UNIVERSITY DAYS. 

An" Episode of Student Life. — Dr. Francis "Wayland. — 
The Old Curriculum. — Dr. Horatio B. Hackett — Pro- 
fessor Romeo Elton. — Governor William Gaston. — 
Mr. Justice Bradley. — The Old Familiar Faces. — 
College Manners then and now. 

PUBLIC affairs are, of course, of tlie first impor- 
tance. In several chapters I have naturally 
dwelt upon them, and upon what I remembered of 
public men. In deference to those who care little 
or nothing for such things, a return, breaking some- 
what the monotony of gossip, may be made to books 
and to teachers. Mr. Peter Bayle, in the chrono- 
logical history of his life, notes, under a certain date, 
" This day I began the study of Greek." I well 
remember the day upon which I did the same 
thing, self-complacently roaming about, "Delectus" 
in hand, and tormenting everybody with the alpha- 
bet, until there was discharged at me the following 
quartrain : — 

" As I my daily lesson sung, 

Repeating Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, 
The. woman, ignorant of the Grecian tongue, 

Mistook for At her ! beat her ! d her ! pelt her ! " 

After that I was less troublesome. I am told that 



92 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the examination of those in quest of matriculation is 
now severer than it once was ; but our boys can hardly 
crawl to the ordeal with darker forebodings, and with 
less of morning -in their faces, than w^e did. Dear 
little Dr. Choules trots up College Street, in Provi- 
dence, at the head of a string of us, all his particular 
young friends, as he takes care to inform the author- 
ities of Brown University, from the smallest tutor to 
the great president. Dr. Francis Wayland, whom 

" Coelo tonantem credidimus lovem regnare." 

It seems to be a particularly hard matter at pres- 
ent to maintain the discipline and to preserve the 
good order of colleges. Dr. Waylaud never had the 
least difficulty. He was disobeyed with fear and 
trembling, and the boldest did not care to encounter 
his frown. He was majestic in manner, and could 
assume, if he pleased, a Khadamanthine severity. 
It was a calamity to be called into that awful pres- 
ence ; and no student, of whatever character, ever 
made the least pretence of not being frightened at 
the summons. Such bravado nobody w^ould have 
believed in : he who indulged in it would have been 
laughed at. However loosely our tongues might 
wag, we thoroughly respected and even reverenced 
the president ; and upon public occasions, w^hen he 
put on his academic gown and cap, we Avere rather 
proud of his iniposing appearance. We told each 
other, over and over again, how many times he re- 
wrote the great sermon on " The Moral Dignity of 



UNIVERSITY DAYS. 93 

the Missionary Enterprise," before he could bring 
it to a perfection which satisfied his rigid taste 
and judgment. The more enthusiastic questioned 
■whether Eobert Hall achieved anything finer. Fresh- 
men believed in his book on Political Economy, 
and seniors did his treatise on Moral Philosophy the 
honor of refuting several of its more important prop- 
ositions. There were traditions of the frightful state 
in which he found the university upon assuming 
its government, after tlie anarchy of Dr. Messer's 
time, and of the vigor with which he reduced it 
to order and studious diligence. If he had less of 
the suaviter in moclo than of the fortiter in re, I 
am not sure that there was any reason to regret the 
deficiency, for he had to deal with thoughtless young 
people, who were none the worse for feeling the 
lieavy hand of a master. There were those who 
thought his firmness akin to obstinacy ; but it must 
be remembered that he was a man of profound con- 
victions, of fastidious conscience, and of opinions not 
lazily arrived at. His temper every one knew to be 
naturally hot and high, but nobody could know how 
severely it was tried, or what efforts he made to 
control it. In his later days, I have been told, after 
his resignation, he exhibited marked urbanity and 
sweetness of disposition. Certainly there were small 
traces of either when any undergraduate was de- 
tected in an act of meanness, or a flagrant violation 
of the university statutes. He had a heavy foot 
for a student's door when it was not promptly op- 



94 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

ened after his official knock. Once, when we were 
bent upon illuminating the college in honor of some 
festive occasion, and contrary to his express injunc- 
tions, he exhibited his abilities in this way most 
effectually. " Mqiio pulsat pecle!' we quoted from 
Horace as we fled from liis wrath, and saw one row 
of lights extincruished after another. We were in 
great fear of suspension or of expulsion for some 
days after. To tell the truth, some of us, with rea- 
son enough, were usually in a state of apprehension. 
One young gentleman, whose conscience was espe- 
cially cowardly that morning, was paralyzed as he 
was crossing the campus, by hearing his name called 
in Boanergesian style. Heavens ! it was the Doc- 
tor who was beckoning to him ! He thought hur- 
riedly of all his misdemeanors of the week just past : 
for which of them was he now to be brought to 
judgment ? What was his astonishment, his exqui- 
site sense of relief, when the president merely said, 

" C , have you a chew of tobacco to spare ? " 

For the Doctor was a shameless consumer of the 
Indian weed ; and some intricate speculation in phil- 
osophy or theology had been brought to a sudden 
standstill by an untimely vacuum in the Doctor's 
box. 

One scans with a kind of aw^e the marvellously 
miscellaneous curriculum which modern ideas of 
liberal education have introduced into our American 
colleges. The young Bachelors must know a little 
of a great many things. In my time it w^as Greek, 



UNIVERSITY DA YS. 95 

Latin, and mathematics, and mathematics, Latin, and 
Greek, for the lirst two years at least, unless the su- 
perficial instruction in rhetoric and elocution is to 
be taken into account. But the limited course, which 
is now held in such small esteem, was far from con- 
temptible in its results. It is all very well to say 
that the men forget their Greek and Latin, or find 
neither of much use in the practical business of after 
life. The grammar and vocabulary they may forget, 
but the taste, the literary sense, the critical judgment 
which, other things being equal, follow early classical 
training, are seldom lost. One who has been nur- 
tured when young upon such diet rarely degenerates 
into a mere Philistine. In Dr. Horatio B. Hackett 
we had a classical teacher of distino'uished abilities 
and accomplishments. He may not have known as 
much Latin as Gottlob Heyne, nor as much Greek 
as Dr. Porson, but he had quite enough of both for 
our young stomachs, especially when the recitation 
was before breakfast. I used to think him a man 
of the sixteenth century. He should have been 
employed in that kind of mastodonian annotation 
which swelled the spare remains of Velleius Pater- 
culus into a chubby quarto of a thousand pages. 
Perhaps it was not altogether our fault if we could 
not relish the discussion of a disputed reading of 
Livy or of Tacitus as he relished it. But I still think 
with admiration and regret, now that I am just a 
trifle wiser, of the innocent arts by which this eru- 
dite teacher sought to beguile us into loving these 



96 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

old books as well as lie did. He would bring a 
speech made by Edmund Burke into the lecture- 
room, and read to us some passage containing an apt 
and elegant quotation from Horace, with the sugges- 
tion that if we should ever become members of Con- 
gress we might captivate the House and the country 
after a fasliion equally felicitous. Alas ! he little 
knew what Congresses were coming to ! He lived, 
for learning, but he conscientiously gave all his great 
acquisitions to the cause of sound Christian knowl- 
edge. As he was accuracy itself, he occupied a high 
position among the American revisers of the English 
Bible, and I suppose that he went on toiling to the 
last. His class-room was like a gymnasium. He 
made us commit the odes of Horace to memory, not 
altogether that we might quote from them in Con- 
gress, he beamed upon us benignly through his spec- 
tacles as we indulged in the invigorating exercise of 
capping Latin verses, and he gave us an analysis of 
the Ars Poetica to be committed to memory which 
would have delighted Dr. Hurd, and was proved to 
be longer, by actual computation, than the Ars Po- 
etica itself ! As a poor atonement for much wayward 
negligence, I give him a place in these humble pages, 
which his memory is far from needing, and which is 
accorded for my satisfaction alone. 

We had another Professor of the Greek and Latin 
languages in the Ptev. Eomeo Elton, S. T. D. It was 
without any accurate prescience of his future propor- 
tions that his parents gave to him the name of the 



UNIVERSITY DAYS. 97 

elegant young lover of Verona, for he was a little, 
round man, of a presence by no means romantic: He 
was a special friend, and had been a classmate of 
]\Ir. Job Durfee, who wrote a moderate epic called 
" Whatcheer," which celebrated, I believe, the foun- 
dation of the State of Ehode Island, and which the 
bard dedicated to his " dear Elton." No great Ovid 
was lost in the Rhode Island Murray. Curiously 
enough, in looking over, the other day, the Life of 
John Foster, the great English Baptist, I encoun- 
tered Professor Elton, Judge Durfee, and "What- 
cheer." Foster's attention had been called to the 
poem by Professor Elton, who wanted his friend's 
book handsomely noticed in some English review to 
which Foster contributed. I believe that he did 
w^rite a good-natured critique of it, but I have not 
been able to find it. It is impossible now to say by 
what concatenation it happened, but the irreverent 
undergraduates of a bygone period had bestowed 
upon the sesquipedalian professor the name of 
" Bump," and tliough he was exceedingly popular, 
he was seldom called anything else. Whether he 
was a strong classical scholar or not we never could 
find out, for he was so absurdly good-natured and 
so punctiliously polite and of such confirmed maii- 
xaise honte withal, that we did much as we pleased 
in his class-room. It was upon the ground-floor, 
and when the exercises became dull, and tlie win- 
dows were open, the students occasioiially jumped 
through them after roll-call and went away. They 
7 



98 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

were not missed by the good doctor, who would prob- 
ably be engaged at the time of the exits in a bland 
illustration of the Iter Brundusium or some other 
part of Horace, drawn from his personal observation 
when abroad. It was averred and generally believed 
that he had told every Sophomore class since 1825 
how, when he was at Gottingen, he slept between 
two feather-beds. This was an adventure the recital 
of which always caused him to cross his short legs 
rapidly in token of satisfaction, and successive classes 
waited for the narration with impatience. He was, 
however, what college professors sometimes are not, 
— he was a perfectly well-bred man, and if he was 
ready to take the word of the boys without question 
or cross-question, the more graceless was it in them 
to tell him falsehoods. When he did duty at even- 
iug prayers, he always remembered " the soldier, the 
sailor, and the slave." This appeared to be a formula 
which he had iixed upon as both comprehensive and 
euphonious ; so he adhered to it, and I do not know 
that he could have done better. There was a rule 
of the college that every dormitory should be visited 
by some member of the Faculty during study hours, 
to make sure that the boys were at their books. 
This was one of Dr. Wayland's early notions of dis- 
cipline ; I am happy to say that the immoral and 
semi-military custom was long ago abandoned in 
Brown University. I am obliged to add that one of 
the professors and most of the young tutors took 
kindly to the espionage, and visited the rooms as- 



UNIVERSITY DAYS. 99 

signed to them with punctilious regularity. Those 
students, however, who lodged in the division of 
Hope College assigned to the Eev. Eomeo Elton, 
S. T. D., had a good time of it. He always looked 
in at the door with a blush, as if he were makinf; an 
unwarrantable intrusion upon domestic privacy, and 
he valorously broke the rule by calling seldom. I 
think that his plan was never to make a domiciliary 
visit oftener than twice a week, and curiously enough 
he always made it at the same hour and upon the 
same days; and always found his grateful young 
gentlemen at home. 

Ours was not a class particularly remarkable for 
scholarship, or, indeed, for anything. We have given 
to the republic two United States Senators, Governor 
Arnold of Ehode Island, and General John Milton 
Thayer, of Nebraska. We gave Kalamazoo College 
a president (Dr. Brooks), and the University of Mich- 
igan a Professor of Latin, Dr. Frieze. This, with sev- 
eral able lawyers and preachers, is all, I believe, we 
have to brag of. I hear of the other men now and 
then, but not with any accompanying flourish of 
trumpets. One reads in the lottery schemes of ap- 
proximation prizes ; and perhaps the class of 1841 
may be permitted to boast of Mr. William Gaston, 
who was in the class above it, and who has since 
been a governor of Massachusetts, and what is more 
remarkable, a Democratic governor of that Eepubli- 
can State. I remember him faintly, for I did not 
know him very well, as a sweet-tempered, courteous, 



100 REMINISCENCES OF A JOUJ^NALIST. 

and sufficiently studious youth, who was never in 
scrapes, but of comfortably even tenor. I antici- 
pated that he would make as good a governor as a 
Democrat could possibly be, nor was I disappointed. 
In the class of 1838 was Mr. Justice Bradley, of 
Ehode Island, the first scholar, I think, of his year, 
of whom we did predict great things. There is some- 
thing pleasant in the loyal way in which lads in col- 
lege recognize an associate of superior ability and 
special promise. How proud they are of him, and 
how fond they are of talking of him as the greatest 
genius in the world ! So we all talked of Bradley. 
When he- was to speak in the chapel after evening 
prayers, how irreverently eager we were for the de- 
votions to be over, that we might listen to our favor- 
ite ! There were other clever fellows, of course, but 
none so clever as he. He handled all topics, philo- 
sophical, political, and literary, with such force and 
ease that we held the matter hardly second to the 
manner, though the manner was as nearly perfect as 
any elocution could be ; yet there were doubters who 
thought that George Van Ness Lathrop, now an emi- 
nent lawyer of Michigan, was, if possible, the greater 
man. Of the comparative merits of these two, the 
discussions ran high, but there was no discussion of 
the rival claims of anybody else. Sometimes — it 
is merely a whim — I wish that I could hear those 
evening speeches over again, and I permit myself to 
wonder whether they were really admirable as we 
thought them. It was so long ago that I cannot 
make up my mind. 



UNIVERSITY DA YS. 101 

I have spoken of several of my old companions 
who have won merited distinction. Shall I not give 
a word to those who have faltered and fallen by the 
wayside, the journey hardly half accomplished, the 
work less than half done ? Surely I may here pay 
my tribute to the memory of one of whom the world 
never heard, but who was once all the world to me ; 
who for two years was my daily and nightly com- 
panion ; with whom I read and talked, and shared 
the pleasures and the pains of those early days. 
How should I anticipate that this, my laughing room- 
mate, would fall into dire religious distractions, and 
seek safety in the asceticisms of the rule of the 
Trappists ? But those were times of Tractarianism, 
of Puseyism, of strange reaction from the negatives 
of Protestantism ; and when bishops shot from their 
great spheres, how was this poor boy to keep in his 
own ? It was little to me when Dr. Newn^an and 
Dr. Orestes A. Brownson passed definitely to Eome ; 
but it was much when my old college friend went 
away from me, and I knew that I should see his 
face no more forever. 

When a man is writing or talking about his col- 
lege life, he is expected, I hardly know for what 
reason, to dwell upon the least reputable parts of it. 
Almost everybody seems to hear with relish of the 
president's horse shaved, of the chapel-bell deprived 
of its tongue, of the cow introduced into the pulpit, 
of assafoetida placed upon the tutor's stove, of inso- 
lent jokes cracked at the expense of men renowned 



102 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

for learning and piety, of windows broken, and of 
homesick freshmen made needlessly miserable by 
coarse intrusion upon their privacy or by cruel pro- 
fanation of their persons. We had enough and more 
than enough of these senseless diversions, and suffi- 
ciently tormented those who had us in charge, or 
who received in sorrow official intelligence of our 
misdemeanors ; but I do not think that tlie students 
of that time were hard-hearted or heartless, and I 
do think that there has been a change in more than 
one institution of learning for the worse. Perhaps 
we were fortunate in the circumstance that, whatever 
our disorderly exploits, nobody thought of putting 
them into the public journals. The insubordination 
of some colleges has now become a staple article of 
news, and those who disturb their studious quiet 
appear to be bolder and more reckless than we were. 
A remipiscent may note this change ; fortunately for 
himself, he is not required to suggest a remedy. At 
any rate, we did not indulge in manslaughter in those 
unsophisticated days. 



THE GREA T DORR WAR. 103 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GREAT DORR WAR. 

State of Affairs previous to the Eebellion. — The Ori- 
gin OF THE People's Constitution. — Dr. John A. Brown. 

— "Governor" Dorr. — The Old Rhode Island Bar. 

— General Thomas F. Carpenter. — Interference of 
Democratic Governors. 

THE episodes of history are seldom fully and ac- 
curately recorded ; yet in history, rightly con- 
sidered, there is no episode. The Rhode Island 
Rebellion made a great noise at the time, as Kansas 
matters and the anarchies of ill-reconstructed South- 
ern States, and the more recent troubles in Maine 
have since : yet there is hardly anybody lof-t com- 
petent to write a full and fair account of events 
which engaged the serious attention of the General 
Government and of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. I certainly am not, for I have forgotten 
much : I have no opportunity of consulting author- 
ities ; and that which I remember is the picturesque, 
the personal, the amusing, rather than dates and the 
drier details. I knew more of the beginning of the 
business than of the end : I had no sympatliy with 
its later phases. The general fact that up to 1843 
the State of Rhode Island was without a Constitu- 
tion will strike those who have the usual faith in 



104 REMINISCENCES OF, A JOURNALIST. 

such paper safeguards Avith an astonishment border- 
ing upon incredulity. But for two features of the 
Charter which were hardly democratic, the little 
State might have gone on pleasantly and prosper- 
ously for another century, under that rag of royalty. 
In the nineteenth century, given as it is to much 
voting, in the United States, which are trying on 
a large scale the experiment of a nearly absolute 
democracy, restrictions of the suffrage will always 
be sure to make many spirits uneasy ; and in Ehode 
Island the suffrage was restricted to land-owners 
and to their eldest sons. It w-as an odd bit of feud- 
alism, — a singular conservation of one of the rights 
of primogeniture. Again, the legislative represen- 
tation, which had been fixed by the Charter in 
1663, had become singularly unequal and arbitrary. 
It was, indeed, one of rotten boroughs. Providence, 
with over 20,000 inhabitants in 1840, had only four 
representatives, while Newport, with less than 10,000 
inhabitants, had six representatives. Townis having 
altogether only 29,000 inhabitants and about 3,000 
voters elected thirty-eight representatives, while but 
thirty-four were chosen by towms having nearly 
80,000 inhabitants and nearly 6,000 voters. The 
reader will bear with this somewhat numerical 
statement of the facts, because some understanding 
of them is necessary to a full comprehension of the 
situation. There was anomaly and inequality enough 
to make those wrho wanted to vote restless and even 
angry. There was an excellent opportunity for 



THE GREAT DORR WAR. 105 

demagogues, and they improved it. The supreme 
authority of the State was in the Legislature, and 
what the composition of the Legislature was, I have 
already shown. Men in possession of political 
power are rarely inclined to abandon it : the Assem- 
bly, therefore, did really postpone a necessary reform 
and cling to an untimely system longer than was 
wise or prudent. The disfranchised petitioned, — 
it was all they could do ; and their petitions were 
not always treated as judiciously as they should 
have been. Once they were referred to a committee, 
which reported against them in what I still consider 
one of the most remarkable pieces of the kind which 
has ever fallen under my notice. It was WTitten 
by Benjamin Hazard, a hard-headed old lawyer, with 
a bottomless contempt for political innovations, and 
was such an essay as an English Tory of the Eldon 
stamp might have fulminated against the Reform 
Bill. It demonstrated by the best of legal logic 
that popular suffrage would be undesirable, and it 
offered to the popular notions of democracy a per- 
fect chevaux-de-frise of special pleading, of replica- 
tion, rejoinder, and rebutter. It was one of those 
arguments which one may feel to be all wrong and 
yet find it difficult to refute ; and when, long after, 
I was asked to write an answer to it, I found the 
task anything but an easy one, and did the job 
badly. There were many stories told at bar dinners 
and suppers of Mr. Hazard's dogmatic and pertina- 
cious ways. One of the drollest was of his rencon- 



106 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

tre ^Yitll an antagonist for once too much for him. 
He had left a convivial party on a dark night, and 
was found soon after arguing with the town pump. 
" Get out of my way 1 " said he. " Move on ! " he 
reiterated. "What do you mean by this disreputable 
conduct ? " Still the pump held its position, when 
the irate lawyer roared, *' Get out of my way, in 
the name of the State of Ehode Island and Provi- 
dence Plantations ! " The pump was proof against 
even this, and his companions coming up, it was 
found necessary to lead him gently to his domicile. 
The year 1840 was one of great political activity 
everywhere, and the contest in Rhode Island was a 
particularly lively one. People who could not vote, 
more than ever envied those who could. In a des- 
perate minority, the Democrats were anxious for a 
good cry. But the movement which was to grow to 
such considerable proportions had a personal and 
somewhat insignificant beginning. There was a Dr. 
John A. Brown, a botanical physician, who supplied 
the people of Providence with root-beer of a pleasant 
and salutiferous quality. Brown's beer was in de- 
mand, and, being of a foamy and effervescent sort, it 
may have had something to do with the ebullitions 
which followed. At any rate, when not engaged in 
building up the constitutions of his patients, the 
doctor was painfully sensible that the ancient State 
had no Constitution of its own, — a deficiency which, 
both as a patriot and a practitioner, he ceased not to 
lament. He determined to start a free-suffrage agi- 



THE GREAT DORR WAR. 107 

tation : secondly, he resolved to emit a free-suffrage 
newspaper ; and, thirdly, he employed me to edit it. 
He might have done much better if he had been able 
to offer a little higher wages ; for I engaged to con- 
vulse Ehode Island (with the Plantations thrown in) 
for the modest remuneration of five dollars per week. 
I trust that no reader will be reminded of the anecdote 
of the negro minister, who, when told that his salary 
was " pretty poor pay," answered, " Yes, and pretty 
poor preachee, too, sar." A name was wanted for 
the journal, and I suggested '• The New Age " as ex- 
pressive and appropriate, particularly as we proposed 
to abolish the work of an age which might be con- 
sidered an old one. So the first number of the news- 
paper was issued from a little office which had just 
about type enough to set up a single edition. Tor 
some time the public paid but limited attention to 
our denunciations of Charles II. and his musty old 
charter ; but Dr. Brown was not in the least discour- 
aged, and I am sure that I was not. I feel that 
whoever read my long dissertations upon the nature 
and origin of government, is, at tliis moment, if liv- 
ing, entitled to my most abject apologies. The doc- 
tor, I knew, was delighted ;, for the beer business 
was, in two senses, lively, and he could afford even 
the expensive luxury of printing a newspaper with- 
out subscribers or purchasers. He was an extremely 
good-natured man*; and the town in Delaware, to 
which he removed after the troubles, made him a 
member of the Legislature. 



108 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

Concession came. As early as January, 1841, the 
General Assembly had called a convention to frame 
a Constitution. This was not the way, however, in 
which the Khode Island Suffrage Association pro- 
posed to reform the State, and when the legal Con- 
stitution was sent to the people for sanction, the 
suffrage men helped to vote it down. Going back 
to first principles, and actually assuming that the 
State was without a government, they held a con- 
vention of their own, and got through with their 
work and had their Constitution ready for the people 
while the authorized body was still in session. There 
was no pretence of legality, in the ordinary sense of 
the word, in their doings. It was simply revolution. 
In April, 1842, the governor of Rhode Island had 
appealed to President Tyler for Federal assistance 
against insurrection; and I think about the best 
public document which Mr. Tyler ever sent forth, 
whoever may have written.it, was the reply in which 
he assured the governor of support and protection. 
The suffrage men assumed that their Constitution 
had been adopted, and began to organize military 
companies to defend it. The days of trouble were 
close at hand. 

The leading spirit of the suffrage movement from 
this time forward was Thomas Wilson Dorr, a Provi- 
dence lawyer of good family, of fair ability, a man of 
boundless obstinacy, which his admirers called firm- 
ness. He had the reputation in Providence of an 
excellent hater, and of being influenced in the course 



THE GREAT DORR WAR. 109 

whicli he pursued by what he considered to be per- 
sonal injuries. In strict historical justice it must be 
said that the plan upon which the suffrage men pro- 
ceeded was not his own. It was devised and deter- 
mined upon in the office of " The New Age " some 
time before Mr. Dorr had anything whatever to do 
with the project. At first he was disinclined to lend 
his name to the enterprise, and he underw^ent a good 
deal of importunity before he could be induced to 
reverse his decision. I was once deputed to ask him 
to make a public address, or to write a letter, or in 
some other way to commit himself. He was a slow 
man, apparently though not really phlegmatic ; but 
he answered me promptly. He said that upon sev- 
eral occasions he had labored for an extension of the 
suffrage, that he had never been properly supported 
by those who should have been swiftest in doing so, 
and that he must respectfully decline all invitations 
to participate in the proposed agitation. As he said 
this, he calmly smoked his cigar, looking, I must say, 
as little like an incendiary and revolutionist as any 
man whom I have ever encountered. He yielded 
afterwards, and, curiously enough, he had bitter rea- 
son to repeat the same complaint of inadequate sup- 
port. He organized his government in Providence 
on the 3d of May, 1842, issued proclamations, sent 
a regular message to his Legislature, which met in a 
foundry, and from that time forth was called the 
Foundry Legislature. The members voted divers 
sums of money, especially for their own per diem 



110 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

and mileage, but they did not run tlie risk of levying 
taxes, — a measure which might have been regarded 
with disfavor by their constituents. " Governor " 
Dorr — " Eightful Governor " as his followers styled 
him — then went away to show himself to his S3^m- 
pathizers in New York, where for a while he was a 
great favorite with the men of the Pewter Mug. He 
came back upon the 16th of May, girt with a sword 
and breathing most belligerently. I saw him draw 
the weapon and wave it in defiance of the general 
and State governments, then and there swearing to 
die rather than yield. I also saAV him, still wearing 
the sword and surrounded by armed men, drawn 
through the streets of Providence in a barouche. 
The last time I ever saw him was at his headquar- 
ters, the house of Burrington Anthony, and I can bear 
testimony to the fact that he was then as dauntless 
as ever. He was, however, in a desperate situation, 
— his State officers resigning, his family imploring 
him to abandon his schemes, all his most respectable 
followers turning against him. He marched that 
night upon the arsenal, but his own men had spiked 
his guns, of which he had six. These he himself tried 
to discharge. Had he succeeded, he, with a good 
many of those about him, might have been dead im- 
mediately after. A murderous discharge of grape 
w^ould have saved the government all the trouble 
which afterward occurred. There would have been 
no subsequent invasion of the State, nor would its 
military annals have contained the short but decisive 



THE GREAT DORR WAR. Ill 

campaign of Cbepatchet. Governor Dorr came back 
again in the last days of June with a motley follow- 
ing, but before the first day of July he had fled again, 
with his Spartan band, after issuing a general order 
dismissing his troops upon the ground that the Suf- 
frage party no longer adhered to " the People's Con- 
stitution." So ended the Dorr war. Mr. Greeley, 
who was the last man in the world to approve a 
needlessly restricted suffrage, summed up the whole 
matter in an excellent Tribune article, in which he 
argued that every proper concession had been made 
by the landholders, and that the charter remained in 
force only because the suffrage men voted down the 
legal Constitution. I have before me an old letter 
written by Governor L. H. Arnold, borrowed from the 
rich autograph collection of my friend, Mr. Gordon 
L. Ford, in which the governor says, " It is due to 
every principle of justice and humanity that Dorr 
should be punished, and may God grant us success 
in our attempts to arrest him." He was arrested, 
tried, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment ; the 
"Eightful Governor" was put to the business of 
painting fans ; he was soon released under an act of 
amnesty, but died not long after his enlargement. 
He had not been a great while in the State Prison 
before the folly of keeping him there was apparent : 
the number of voters who legally should have been 
with him was too fjreat. 

It is curious that stern and stormy political dis- 
cussion should always be provocative not merely of 



112 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

satire but of fun. This was true of the great French 
Eevolution ; it is also true of the little Dorr war. 
There was no important discharge of musketry, but 
there was an endless fusillade of squibs. The law- 
yers of College Street were " law and order " almost 
to a man ; I believe that the efforts of several of 
them went to the production of " The Great Slocum 
Dinner," a brochure reprinted afterwards by Messrs. 
Sidney S. Eider and Brothers, of Providence. This 
house also reprinted " The Dorriad," a clever satire. 
In the former work I find rather a kindly allusion to 
my old master in the law. General Thomas F. Car- 
penter, a man of many merits and of many foibles, 
— a stately, kind-hearted, old-fashioned gentleman, 
of that polished sort which in this day of careless 
manners is not often met with. Without being elo- 
quent, he had a taking way with the juries, which 
won him many difficult cases about which he was 
never weary of talking. Never was there such a 
man for fighting his battles over again. His stu- 
dents, being always conveniently present, were the 
most favored recipients of his recollections. He had 
a natural tendency to exaggeration ; there was some- 
thing of rich idealism in his talk which saved it 
from any imputation of boasting. He defied a young 
lady who was breakfasting with him to guess of 
what metal the coffee-pot was made. If she had 
been a clever girl she would have guessed the uten- 
sil to be of silver, and her conjecture would have 
been received without comment; but being of a 



THE GREAT DORR WAR. 113 

frank, lausjliincr character, she messed " tin." " Ah ! 
Miss," said the general, " that is the mistake which 
all my guests make. The coffee-pot is of platina, a 
metal more precious than gold." He was a Demo- 
crat, through and through, and he once informed us, 
with great gravity that he expected to be obliged to 
lay down his life before the election of 1840 was 
over, and that he should attend the next Democratic 
Convention "armed, gentlemen, armed." He would 
take his stand in front of the bookcase and lecture 
us about the volumes which it contained. " Here," 
for instance, he said one day, pointing to a civil law- 
book about contracts, " here is a work which I never 
permit a month to go by without reading." Unfor- 
tunately, he took it down, and in doing so covered 
himself with dust. It had not been off the shelf for 
Heaven knows how long. He had been a general 
of militia long before, and his exploits upon the 
muster-field furnished an endless series of narratives. 
Once, when a regiment was marching by, he expressed 
great contempt for the outfit of the commanding offi- 
cer. " My bridle," he said, " was worth all his accou- 
trements put together." So he went on talking and 
we went on laughing through those merry hours. 
Darker ones came to him, and to all of us. During 
the Eebellion the general got into trouble, and was 
arrested, — an indignity which might have killed 
him, and which he never forgave. It was, perhaps, 
an unnecessary piece of severity ; but men in author- 
ity in those days were not always wise. 

8 



114 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

The Providence bar was then a very able one, as 
it may be now. There was Samuel Y. Atwell, John 
Whipple, Samuel Ames, — but I need not continue 
the catalogue, which would have but little interest 
for the general reader. It is a melancholy consider- 
ation that the fame of lawyers is seldom of a pro- 
longed character, and every bar has its magnates of 
whom the world outside has not heard much. Who 
was it said, " Lawyers work hard, live well, and die 
poor " ? Their eloquence is unreported ; the record 
of their intellectual labor is in professional books 
which have only professional readers ; their wit, of 
which they have so much, is unrecorded, and floats 
about in tlie welter of tradition, now attributed to 
this man, now to that. I do not remember who it 
was said the sharp thing which I am about to repeat. 
There was a Providence lawyer of prodigious prolix- 
ity, and once he gave the jury the benefit of his as- 
tronomical knowledge in a drawling tone, something 
after this fashion : " We are informed — gentlemen 
of the jury — that there are — planets so far distant 
from the earth — that though their light — has been 
travelling — ever since the creation — it has not yet 

reached us." " Probably will, Brother C , before 

you get through," said the acknowledged wag of the 
bar. See what fame is ! I have forgotten his name. 

In conclusion, I may point out what I consider 
to be the moral of the Dorr Kebellion. Its history 
should serve as a perpetual warning against inter- 
meddling. If the Democrats of other States had 



THE GREAT DORR WAR, 115 

left Ehode Island to herself, — if Governor Morton, of 
Massachusetts, Governor Hubbard, of New Hamp- 
shire, Governor Cleveland, of Connecticut, — if the 
leading Democrats of New- York City had permitted 
the people of Ehode Island to settle their own dis- 
putes, there would have been no serious trouble. 
The People's Constitution was never fairly adopted 
by a majority of the people. Whatever deficiency 
was anticipated was supplied by proxy votes, cast 
by the managers of the movement, in the name of 
the dead, the absent, and the non-existent anywhere. 
But, upon the whole, there is ground for encourage- 
ment in the safe deliverance out of all their trials 
which Providence vouchsafes to our endangered 
States. After such perils and such victory of order 
in Ehode Island, in Kansas, in Maine, in so many 
Southern States, who can doubt the recuperative 
and salient force of our democracy,, and the strength 
of governments at once popular and intelligent ? 



116 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 



CHAPTER IX. 

LITERAKY MEMORIES. 

Literary Characteristics. — The Transcendental Period. 
— Influence of Carlyle, — Margaret Fuller. — Sarah 
Helen Whitman. — Henry Giles. — Literary Remuner- 
ation. 

I MAKE little attempt to proceed in strict chro- 
nological sequence ; and perhaps the reader will 
be kind enough to consider it all as scarce more for- 
mal than a rambling conversation, — a monologue 
lacking the convenient suggestions and stimulus of a 
real table-talk, — a mensal chat, the guests sightless, 
and the master of the humble feast merely a solilo- 
quizer, — though there are ghosts enough. Heaven 
knows, at the board. As early as 1837, there be- 
gan a peculiar period of intellectual activity, — the 
era of what is called, though not with much scien- 
tific accuracy, transcendentalism. The influence of 
Thomas Carlyle upon American letters was felt 
about that time, particularly in our colleges, and the 
name of that venerable man is often conjoined with 
Mr. Emerson's, though the two have hardly a liter- 
ary or intellectual trait in common, unless that of 
writing unconventional English may be so consid- 
ered. There was a Carlyle mania in our college, 



LITERARY MEMORIES. 117 

which resulted in the production of what I am 
afraid was sad nonsense. We all went through 
what may be regarded as a storm-and-stress period. 
Some of us manufactured bad poetry, and some of 
us equally bad prose: we talked of "shams" and 
" wind-bags " ; and the more incomprehensible they 
were, the profounder we considered our productions 
to be. Yet I am even now inclined to think that 
there was a genuine earnestness at the bottom of it 
all. It was a sprawling, awkward, hobble-de-ho}'- 
effort to be manly ; and at least it was more whole- 
some than the Byronic fever, which just before that 
had so sorely tried the constitutions of American 
youth, and the patience of their natural guardians. 
Our efforts to write like Carlyle drove the Professor 
of Ehetoric nearly frantic ; but a little intercourse 
with the actual soon knocked the nonsense out of 
us, and we returned to our respect for IMurray's 
Grammar and for the style of Addison and Mac- 
aulay, having discovered that an affectation of sin- 
cerity is no better than a satanic affectation of 
falsehood. 

All the pretence of supernatural instincts and of 
God-inspired intuitions, was not confined to the 
college. Providence had town-folk who wrote poe- 
try as bad as ours, and two or three who wrote more 
rationally than we did. The main point was to be 
unintelligible. The more nearly we justified the mot 
that " language was given to conceal our thoughts," 
the more successful we considered ourselves to be. 



118 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

It is easy to see what happened when a young per- 
son of no special natural ability and of small and 
fragmentary culture talked according to his own 
notion, as Novalis wrote. Margaret Fuller (not yet 
a marchioness, but a school-mistress) lived then and 
pursued her noble calling nobly in Providence. I 
saw her sometimes in company and heard lier talk, 
— it w^ould be hardly proper to say converse, for 
nobody else said much when she was in the Delphic 
mood. The centre of a circle of rapt and devoted 
admirers, she improvised not merely pamphlets, but 
thick octavos and quartos. Such an astonishing 
stream of language never came from any other wo- 
man's mouth. " She brought with her," said Mr. 
Emerson, " wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, ora- 
cles." She did not argue. I think she had a way 
of treating dissentients with a crisp contempt which 
was distinctly feminine. She had no taste for dia- 
lectics, as she took care to inform those who did 
not agree with her. She considered her own opinion 
to be conclusive, and a little resented any attempt 
to change it. Yet there was something eminently 
elevated in her demeanor, for it was that of a woman 
swaying all around her, not by fascinating manner, 
nor yet by personal beauty, of which she had none, 
but through the sheer force of a royal intellect. 
There were peculiarities in her ways and carriage 
which were not agreeable, — a fashion of moving 
her neck, and of looking at her shoulders as if she 
admired them ; and her voice was not euphonious. 



LITERARY MEMORIES. ^g 

Mr. Emerson says that personally she repelled him 
upon first acquaintance; but I was so astonished 
and spell-bound by her eloquence, by such discourse 
as I had never before heard from a woman, and have 
never heard from a, woman since, that I sat in si- 
lenccpfr^ '^ y ^^^« ^^^d been fifty instead of two 
I should -il^T^ ,^°^^^^ a^ excellent use for them. I 
do not mean to •^^Vll'l^: T comprehended all that 
she said ; I had not read the pluiosopntri'i and poets 
of Germany as she had : but simply to listeix was 
enough, without cheap understanding. Something 
like this fascination must have been exercised by 
Coleridge over the listeners who gathered about him 
at Highgate, and went away charmed but puzzled, 
— delighted they knew not why. Was it a pleas- 
ure analogous to that of music, — a suggestion too 
delicate for analysis ? 

While writing for " The Tribune," Miss Fuller was, 
for a while, a member of Mr. Horace Greeley's fam- 
ily, and I have sometimes thought that the table-talk 
of these peculiar persons must have been at once in- 
structive and amusing, — instructive, I mean, in mat- 
ter, and amusing in manner. Each was dogmatic 
and opinionative, and neither inclined to admit error 
or mistake. Each held personal convictions in high 
reverence, but Miss Fuller was especially disposed 
to resent any interference with her own methods of 
thought and action. I believe that Mr. Greeley has 
himself put upon record that it was impossible for 
him to agree with his guest about diet, and especially 



120 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

about tea, of which the lady was fond. He was 
wont to attribute her breakfast headaches to a con- 
sumption over night of that noxious beverage ; but 
as he tells us amusingly, she soon let him know un- 
mistakably that no discussion of her tastes would be 
tolerated ; and he was too gentlemanly to say a w^^^ 
even of the deleterious effects of tea after t}^^^^ 

There was a habit once,_which .foj^^^-^^tely is not 
now so common of v^j^^^^p^^jjg q^j, American repu- 
tations .Yrcli old staple fames. This poet was like 
v\^ordsworth ; Mr. Emerson, I believe, was the Ameri- 
can Montaigne ; Miss Fuller was the American De 
Stael ; Mr. Poe was the American Hoffmann. This 
prattle was especially silly when it was about Miss 
Fuller, who was no more like De Stael than she was 
like Bettina, with whom I have also heard her par- 
alleled. Schiller wrote to Goethe of the brilliant 
Frenchwoman, " She insists upon explaining every- 
thing." I am sure that Miss Margaret did not at- 
tempt to explain anything, for that would have been 
a condescension to which she was not prone. Schil- 
ler speaks also of De Stael's " horror of the Ideal 
Philosophy, which she thinks leads to the mysteri- 
ous and superstitious " : there was no likeness there, 
nor was the American lady, like the French, " pas- 
sionate and rhetorical." If I remember rightly, she_ 
was calm in her speech, though occasionally swift; 
but she had a talent for summing up concisely, as 
when she said of Goethe, " I think he had the art- 
ist's hand and the artist's eye, but not the artist's 



LITERARY MEMORIES. 121 

love of structure." This compactness sometimes be- 
came almost comical, as when, in " The Dial," she 
dismissed Mr. Longfellow's latest work with only 
tlie remark, " Tliis is the thinnest of all Mr. Long- 
fellow's thin volumes," which was hardly kind and 
scarcely critical. It is remarkable that this note- 
worthy woman's fame has already become tradi- 
tional ; she is remembered as a voluble talket*, but 
much is not said of her books. She had colloquial 
habits of composition, and was rather a careless 
writer. The work upon wliich she had bestowed the 
greatest pains was lost with her in the remorseless 
sea; her literary contributions to "The Tribune" 
were not of permanent value. It was her task to 
deal mainly with the temporary and evanescent, and 
to be obliged to toil too much from day to day ; but 
always, in American literature, she will remain a re- 
markable biographic phenomenon, wdiile the tragic 
death of this Lycidas of women, a most painful per- 
sonal story of shipwreck, was intensified by so many 
melancholy incidents that whoever, long years hence, 
may read of them, will wonder how the gods could 
have been so pitiless, and why the life of new hap- 
piness and of larger intellectual achievement which 
was before her should so suddenly have ended upon 
that savage and inhospitable shore. 

The best literary people at that time in Provi- 
dence were always to be met at the agreeable house 
of Miss Annie C. Lynch (now Mrs. Botta), who has, 
during her residence in New York, been equally 



122 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

hospitable, and equally fortunate in her hospitality. 
It was there that I met the late Mrs. Sarah Helen 
"Whitman, a woman of special and various literary 
abihties, a poet of such originality that she should 
be better known, and a writer capable of strong and 
excellent work, as her contributions to Brownson's 
" Quarterly Eeview " testified. If this were the place 
for definite literary criticism I should be tempted to 
express somewhat more largely my estimate of the 
peculiar and delicate beauty of many of Mrs. Whit- 
man's poems. Her eye for the charms of nature was 
almost painfully acute, and, I might say, microscopic ; 
so that I heard one of her friends say that it was 
nearly a pain to walk with her, since she expected 
him to share in such a perpetual and minute obser- 
vation. Not a tint of the sky, the meadow, the 
river, the wood, escaped her ; no flower was too small 
to be seen by her ; and all her glances, like those of 
Thoreau, were discoveries. There had been peculiar 
and deep sorrow in her early life ; then succeeded a 
period of calm culture and of comparative happiness ; 
then darker days of disappointment. It is not a se- 
cret, I believe, that she was betrothed to Poe, and that 
he behaved in the affair with his usual insane selfish- 
ness. If a marriage was contemplated, as I suppose 
it was, it was well and wise to give it up, for no hap- 
piness could have come of it to either. She remained, 
however, steadfast in her affection for that unfortu- 
nate man of genius. To speak well of him was an 
instant passport to her friendship and good of&ces. 



LITERARY MEMORIES. 123 

Once, when I had printed a critical estimate of Mr. 
Poe's genius and writings, I was gratified by receiv- 
ing from her a letter in which she thanked me for 
what she was pleased to regard as some service to 
his fame and some vindication of his character. Cu- 
riously enough, she insisted in this letter upon Poe's 
goodness of heart and unselfish disposition, which 
were points upon which I was inclined to disagree 
with her. Of his cleverness and wonderful literary 
dexterity she could not think more highly than I 
did. One of her finest poems was inspired by the 
poet's death. It is entitled " Eesurgam," and will be 
found in her "Hours of Life." 

I think it was in Providence that I first met ]\Ir. 
Henry Giles, and made that acquaintance which af- 
terward deepened into a permanent and delightful 
friendship. He still lives, though ill health has sus- 
pended his literary activity. By birth an Irishman, 
he had won a high position in England as a Unita- 
rian preacher, was the personal friend of James Mar- 
tineau, and was regarded by the connection as one 
of its ablest controversialists. He came to America 
in 1840, and though he continued occasionally to 
preach, he was best known throughout the country 
as a popular lecturer. I never knew what Irish elo- 
quence was until I heard Mr. Giles ; only then did 
I begin to understand how Curran and Grattan and 
Pliillips and O'Connell could so move the mercurial 
children of the Emerald Isle. Here was brilliancy 
without vulgarity or ridiculous excess ; warmth with- 



124 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

out extravagance ; a rapid imagination still kept well 
in hand ; a rhetoric without superabundance. Apart 
from his noble head and musical voice, Mr. Giles 
had small personal advantages as an orator, for his 
figure was diminutive, and had lost its symmetry 
through an accident in infancy. But if these draw- 
backs had been much greater than they were, they 
would have been utterly forgotten by his audiences. 
He could provoke to laughter, he could move to 
tears; when he dwelt upon the wrongs of Ireland 
he made us all, in pity and indignation, forget its 
follies. Those who heard him for the first time ex- 
pected nothing when he arose, and everything before 
he had concluded. He had, like all his countrymen, 
a great love of good stories, and nobody could tell 
them better. His fund of anecdote was inexhausti- 
ble, so that when he reviewed Dean Eamsay's book 
on Scotch humor, I think in " The Christian Exam- 
iner," he made it a point, whenever he quoted one of 
the Dean's stories, to supplement it by one of his 
own. But, admirable as Mr. Giles was as a lecturer, 
preacher, and essayist, it was as a talker that he was 
supreme. It is impossible to compute out of how 
many hours' sleep he has pleasantly cheated me. 
His writings, fine as they are, give no idea of his 
humor, pathos, and learning; and what, after all, 
were these to his genial nature and superabundant 
generosity ? With the careless humanity of his 
country, he would give away whatever was in his 
pocket, and if he were asked for them, his coat and 



LITERARY MEMORIES, 125 

his cloak also. Chronic Jeremy Didcllers, whose 
only recommendation was their brogue, waylaid him 
and despoiled him, to the great distress and indig- 
nation of his excellent Yankee wife. Finally it 
was thought best that she should keep the money. 
Pitiful were his appeals for a small sum while a 
sturdy swindler from County Wexford, or other 
Irish county, was waiting at the street-door. Usu- 
ally it was known to everybody in the house, 
except Mr. Giles, that he had called upon the same 
errand several times before, — always hailing from a 
different county, — and was likely to call several 
times again. But the persistent kindness of the 
benevolent man generally carried the day and sent 
the tramp away rejoicing. My friend was like Oli- 
ver Goldsmith in his utter want of sharp worldly 
wisdom. His wife would point to his handsome and 
quite extensive library, and tell you, with honest 
pride, that before he married he never kept a book. 
He was so genial and generous, and so full of sym- 
pathy with the sorrows of others, that he should 
never have known any of his own ; but they came 
to him heavy and not a few in number. He broke 
dowar utterly while delivering one of a course of lec- 
tures at the Low^ell Institute in Boston ; deep and 
tragic bereavement followed ; many griefs fell to his 
lot wdiich he might well have been spared : but so 
long as he lives he will be loved, and deserves to be. 
The mention of a man of genius who lived by his 
pen reminds me of the great and remarkable changes 



126 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

which have taken place in my own time in the mat- 
ter of literary remuneration. Fifty years ago, in this 
country, apart from the money paid to preachers, and 
perhaps the writers of school-books, there was no 
such thing. I should be surprised to learn that 
Bryant received any pecuniary compensation what- 
ever for " Thanatopsis," which was published in " The 
North American Eeview " in 1817. The only Amer- 
ican poet of that early period who was well paid was 
Eobert Treat Paine, Jr., who received eleven dollars 
a line for his celebrated song of " Adams and Lib- 
erty," and liberal profits from several other poems. 
But Paine had a great many family and other friends 
in Boston and the neighborhood, and was personally 
and locally popular. Out of Boston, in 1820, 1 ques- 
tion if any Massachusetts editor received so much as 
five hundred dollars a year; for most writing in news- 
papers was done by lawyers and other men of educa- 
tion as a labor of love or of political fealty. The first 
magazines paid nobody, and much later there were 
respectable periodicals which never ran the risk of 
hurting a young writer's pride by offering him sordid 
wages. It was honor enough to be printed, and only 
a little money was paid to distinguished contributors 
whose names advertised the magazine. The lyceum, 
then most economically managed, seldom gave more 
than twenty dollars for a lecture, many of them gave 
even less ; I remember, and have reason to remem- 
ber, an instance in which only ten dollars were paid 
for a lecture on Shakespeare, which, however, was 



LITERARY MEMORIES. 127 

considerably more than it was worth. I believe that 
Godey and Graham, the Philadelphia magazine pub- 
lishers, were the first to pay at all handsomely. The 
coolness with which an editor would graciously 
" accept " an article and print it, without a word of 
thanks, was even then irritating, though we did not 
expect anything else ; now it would be regarded as a 
piece of swindling. Mr. Willis w^as the first maga- 
zine writer who was tolerably well paid ; at one 
time, about 1842, he was writing four articles monthly 
for four magazines, and receiving one hundred dol- 
lars for each. Even this would not now be consid- 
ered much for a man of his great reputation and 
popularity as a writer. But all is changed. Prices 
for newspaper work of a literary class have nearly 
trebled within twenty years. A new liberal profes- 
sion has been created, which well-educated men are 
glad to enter, and in which they find, if they are 
worthy of it, substantial encouragement. 



128 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 

Old Antislavery Feeling. — A Musical Mob, — The Nom- 
ination OF Taylor and Cass. — The Free-soil Party. 
— The Massachusetts Coalition. — Henry Wilson. — 
Abbott Lawrence. — Benjamin F. Hallett. — The Fugi- 
tive Slave Law. — Horace Mann. 

THEEE never was a time when, in most of the 
Northern and Northwestern States, an anti- 
slavery feeling was imperceptible. This is generally- 
true of New England, and particularly of Massa- 
chusetts and Vermont, where the purely philan- 
thropic sentiment against the relic of barbarism had 
something of the warmth and force of a religious 
conviction ; nor should the Quaker benevolence of 
Pennsylvania, with the sturdy conscientiousness of 
Ohio and Indiana, be forgotten. In closely con- 
tested quarters those antislavery men who per- 
mitted themselves to vote, were frequently numerous 
enough to hold the local balance of power, and to 
be regarded by political leaders as at least worthy 
of conciliation. The letters which candidates, and 
esj)ecially candidates for Congress, wrote from 1830 
to 1840, would form a convenient hand-book for the 
use of those politicians who still adhere to the old, 
increnious method of winning hearts and hands witli 



THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 129 

votes in them. One need not have a long memory 
to remember the day ^vhen the Democratic party 
itself was far from unanimous in its fealty to the 
institution of institutions, the corner-stone of the 
republic, when the Whig party was locally loud 
in protestation of its fidelity to Free Speech, and 
that Eight of Petition which John Quincy Adams 
so truculently asserted and defended in his old age. 
If a candidate was then interrogated by a handful 
of righteous men in his district upon these points, 
no matter what his politics might be, he usually 
sent back a civil answer, in which he professed him- 
self a man of "Northern principles." There were 
cut and dried formulas which may have meant little 
to those who used them, but which meant a great 
deal to those wdio asked for and received them. 
The affectations of intense Unionism were not much 
known. There had been some reaction from the 
hard and bitter bigotry which maltreated Mr. Gar- 
rison, and drove George Thompson out of the coun- 
try upon the occasion of his first visit. There is 
less need that I should dwell, even in the most 
cursory way, upon the era of mob-rule, for the his- 
tory has already been written by the able hand of 
my friend, Mr. Oliver Johnson. The mildest and 
most melodious suppression of free speech which I 
remember may be just mentioned. An antislavery 
meeting was to be held in one of our churches, 
^^■hich the dissentients determined to prevent. So 
they made an arrangement, in the nature of a con- 

9 



130 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

spiracy with the choir to sing down the speakers. 
Every effort to organize was overwhelmed by a flood 
of psalmody. " Old Hundred " and " Brattle Street" 
and " Denmark " drowned the voices of the orators, 
who could only gesticulate against "the covenant 
with death and the agreement with hell." This was 
insolent and unjust enough ; but it was less brutal 
than the tar and feathers occasionally resorted to, 
safer and more economical than tearing down the 
meeting-house. The influence of the Garrisonians 
upon the public heart continued ; the agitation was 
unrestrained and unending ; but I may be pardoned 
for expressing the opinion that it did not reach the 
public head. The Abolitionists proper kept the 
North wary and watchful, and ready for action if 
action should be found imperatively necessary. It 
swept away the thin cover of Biblical texts which 
the church had thrown over the hideous " sum of 
all villanies " ; it made havoc of the political para- 
doxes of Mr. Calhoun ; and it prepared the Free 
States for righteous resentment and a sturdy protest 
when the slaveholder eml3raced the policy of mak- 
ing the Union subsidiary to his purpose of perpetu- 
ating slavery, by casting scorn upon the Missouri 
Compromise, and sowing the teeth of the dragon in 
fresh and unpolluted soil. 

The nomination of General Taylor by the Whigs, 
and of General Cass by the Democrats with the dis- 
affection of the New York Barnburners, and the 
nomination of Van Buren and Adams by the Buf- 



THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 131 

falo Free- Soil Convention, brought the antislavery 
question distinctly before the people, and it knew 
no abeyance until, after all the woe and waste of 
an internecine struggle, it was determined, and 
righteously determined, upon the field of battle. I 
do not think that the issue would have been so pre- 
cipitated but for the fatuity of the slaveholders, ex- 
hibited in their persistent demand that there should 
be no discussion. Their Northern allies did them 
no service by aping their methods and echoing their 
passionate and unreasonable denunciations. The 
gods had determined upon their destruction : the 
last relic of their reason left them when they made 
the election of Mr. Lincoln an excuse for the most 
enormous treason which the world has ever wit- 
nessed. 

The Free Soil party, which sprung to life in Mas- 
sachusetts as a ^consequence of the nomination of 
General Taylor, had cause enough for being, but 
never a thoroughly healthy existence. Several well- 
known Whigs, including Henry Wilson, Judge Al- 
len, of Worcester, and Stephen C. Phillips, of Salem, 
joined its ranks, and these occupied leading posi- 
tions ; but it w^as mainly reinforced by Democrats, 
whose lingering affection for Mr. Van Buren had 
been sorely wounded by his failure to secure a re- 
nomination. It started in " truck and dicker ; " it 
was animated by personal resentments ; and it was 
always hampered by its unnatural connection with 
the Democrats, who used it for securing a share of 



132 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the State plunder, and utterly ignored it when ques- 
tions of national moment were to be debated and 
decided. The feeling which this unnatural alliance 
excited in Massachusetts kept the Whig party alive 
in that State for several years, and gave it more 
than one victory, even after it was well-nigh in the 
article of death. I believe Mr. Wilson to have been 
in the main honest, but he had an incurable propen- 
sity to manage and to manoeuvre, and, though direct 
enough in his purposes, he did not hesitate to pro- 
mote them by indirect methods. The young men, 
Avho looked up to him as a leader, caught something 
of his notions of political morality, which found 
their culmination in the Know-Nothing movement 
hereafter to-be mentioned and discussed. I would 
not speak thus frankly of Mr. Wilson's public char- 
acter, now that he is dead, if I had not a hundred 
times spoken of it, and sometimes to himself, while 
he was living. The vice of his political constitution 
was that he could see no wrong in bargains, coa- 
litions, agreements, alliances, — not like that of 
1872, which was animated by a common disapproval 
of the policy of the national administration, but un- 
natural, unnecessary, and based on personal ambi- 
tions and chronic hunger for office. It is hard to 
find fault with an arrangement which made Charles 
Sumner a senator of the United States ; but who 
does not now wish that he had entered upon his 
great career in a different way ? The copartnership 
of the Democratic and Free Soil parties in Massa- 



THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 133 

cliusetts led to a great deal of dubious legislation ; 
but the worst of it was that it permanently injured 
the manly tone of political sentiment, and was not 
without an unfortunate influence upon the Kepub- 
lican party in that State. " All the Barnburners of 
1848," says Mr. Wilson, in his " Eise and Fall of 
the Slave Power in America," "in their desire to 
avenge the wrongs of Van Buren and Wright, were 
willing to use Free Soil weapons." I heard John 
Van Buren in 1848 in Faneuil Hall, with his collar 
and neckerchief off, proclaim that the Democratic 
party of New York was to be a great antislavery 
party ; that the Democratic party of the United 
States was to be the great antislavery party of the 
United States ! How we howled for joy, and cheered 
until we were hoarse, at this fierce prediction of the 
Barnburner prophet and prince ! " If," says Mr. 
Wilson, in his " History," " John Van Buren had 
remained true to the principles he then advocated, 
he would unquestionably have been one of the fore- 
most men of the Kepublican party." This is all 
very well in a boolv ; but I do not believe that Mr. 
Wilson ever expected that John Van Buren would 
" remain true," and there is something a little comic 
in the way in which the grave senator laments the 
defection of his brilliant and darling associate of a 
day. 

The nomination of General Taylor disappointed a 
great many people, and notably Mr. Webster. At 
first he declared, as he only could declare, that he 



134 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

would have notliing to do with the matter ; but there 
were ways of persuading him to change his mind 
which were not unknown to his wealthy friends. He 
was induced to make a speech in support of the hero 
of Buena Vista, but he took away half the force of 
his advocacy by declaring that " the nomination was 
not fit to be made." The Whig State Committee, 
naturally anxious to print the speech as a campaign 
document, and equally anxious not to print a certain 
part of it, employed Mr. Peter Harvey to conduct 
negotiations regarding a prudent excision. It may 
seem remarkable that such overtures should have 
been made to so great a man, and I anticipate an 
indignant denial of the truth of the story from some 
unwise admirer of Mr. Webster. As my information 
came directly from the gentleman who managed the 
matter, I await with less anxiety the contradiction 
which this paragraph will inevitably call forth. 

If some of the ablest Whigs of Massachusetts re- 
pudiated the nomination, some of the richest, and, 
among them, Mr. Abbott Lawrence, gave it an un- 
qualified and, in one sense, I may say a generous 
support. He was sent as Minister to England after 
the organization of the new administration, and won 
us and himself great credit by the large-handed way 
in which he maintained the hospitalities of the lega- 
tion. He brought back with him the most thor- 
oughly English manner which I have ever known an 
American to acquire. I thought of him continually 
when, years after, I listened to a debate — and a dull 



THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 135 

and stupid one it was — in the House of Commons. 
Mr. Lawrence did not drop his " h's "; but he higgled 
and hesitated, and used his eye-glass exactly like a 
first lord of the treasury. While he had been abroad, 
the Free Soilers and Democrats of the State had con- 
cocted a series of constitutional amendments, good, 
bad, and indifferent ; and as there was a warm oppo- 
sition to them on the part of the Whigs, it was 
thought desirable that Mr. Lawrence should make a 
speech against them. There was a new apportion- 
ment of the representatives which was particularly 
obnoxious; and when Mr. Lawrence came to our 
town to speak, I was astonished at a request made 
by one of his friends that I would prepare for his 
use a brief abstract of the most odious features of the 
new plan. " Oh ! " I said, " Mr. Lawrence knows 
more about these matters than I do." " On the con- 
trary," said the applicant, " he knows nothing about 
them." So I did the work as well as I could ; but, 
alas ! when Mr. Lawrence came to the subject in his 
speech, the muddle which he made of my figures was 
enough to throw me into a cold perspiration. It was 
evident that he had confided in my accuracy to a 
lamentable extent, — an honor which I could well 
have dispensed with. With his eye-glass going up 
and down, he read : " New Ashford — twenty thou- 
sand voters — no, twenty voters — no, twenty-five 
voters — one representative every other year — no, 
every year, eh ? — Lowell — no, Lawrence, eh ? — 
large town — three representatives — no, two repre- 



136 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

sentatives, eh ? — What, fellow-citizens, could be 
more outrageous ? " I should not so much have 
cared if the gallery had not been full of Free Soilers, 
grinning fearfully and stamping ironically. When 
Mr. Lawrence came from the platform, he asked me 
not to report his speech, as he might wish to make 
it elsewhere. I hastened to assure him, in the most 
civil manner, that I had no such intention. I ven- 
ture to mention the circumstances because this was 
not the first instance, nor has it been the last, in 
which I have known public speakers .of large repu- 
tation to employ gentlemen of the press in the same 
way, and often, I am grieved to add, to as little 
purpose. 

Yet I would not have the reader understand from 
these allusions to the foibles of Mr. Lawrence, which 
were perfectly harmless and even engaging, that he 
was unentitled to the highest respect. Eising from 
comparative poverty to great opulence, there was no 
trace of the sordid in his nature, and he answered 
innumerable appeals to his benevolence with profuse 
liberality. The Scientific school which he founded 
at Cambridge, and which bears his name, is a monu- 
ment such as kings might envy, and may for ages 
attest the intelligence of his mind not less than the 
generosity of his heart. We always reckoned him 
among the most liberal of the Whigs of Massachu- 
setts ; and although he w^as eminently conservative, 
as men of great wealth are apt to be, although ho 
was a little too much disposed to acquiesce in accom- 



THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 137 

plished facts, or those which he regarded as accom- 
plished, yet he never had any hearty sympathy either 
with slavehoklers or their Northern allies. I think 
if we had a hundred great merchants like him left in 
the country that perhaps the political atmosphere 
would be sweeter, and the foundations of the repub- 
lic just a little more secure. 

The coalition of hard-hearted Democrats and of 
soft-hearted Free Soilers for some time gave to the 
utterances of really honest men a savor of insincer- 
ity, which did them, I admit, substantial injustice. 
There was an undeniable aroma of plunder about 
the partition of the offices : the governorship to the 
Democrats, the senatorship to the other party ; this 
place to a Fugitive -Slave Law man, and that to one 
who held the enactment in horror. It was easy to 
ridicule and denounce such a coalition, but it w^as 
not easy to arrest its progress ; for there was an 
equally unnatural coalition upon the other side, of 
Hunker AVhigs and Hunker Democrats, of such men 
as Beujamin K. Curtis and Benjamin F. Hallett. 
The last-named person was particularly obnoxious 
on account of his complete surrender of his early 
autislavery opinions upon the altar of party. Hard 
Avords were said of him, as a single anecdote will 
show. One morning he met Mr. Edward Sohier, 
a distinguished member of the Boston bar, who 
asked him how lie did. "Pretty well, Mr. So- 
hier," answered Hallett, ''though people abuse me, 
and, in fact, they call me Judas Iscariot." " Pretty 



138 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

bad," replied the wit, "but what do you think Judas 
would say ? How do you think Judas would like 
it ? " I suppose the truth to be that the coalition 
which ultimately resulted in entirely taking Massa- 
chusetts out of the hands of the Whigs, who had 
politically controlled it for so many years and by 
such large majorities, was based upon the feeling 
that anything was better than a tame surrender to 
the professional Union-savers. When the law was 
practically enforced in Boston, the citizens, though 
some of them assisted in the loathsome work, were 
deeply and profoundly mortified. When the fugi- 
tive slave, Simms, was claimed by Potter, of Georgia, 
a lady of the most refined and conservative circles, 
annoyed by the tumult and ashamed of the indig- 
nity offered to the city, exclaimed, " Pray, why does 
not somebody kidnap Potter ? " While the hearing 
in the Simms case was going on, the court-house 
was surrounded with heavy chains to kaep out the 
people. Let it be remembered that this was the 
State court-house, in which State courts were then 
in session ; the United States being only tenants of 
rooms at one end, across which the United States 
marshal could easily have placed a barrier. Mr. 
Charles Sumner, when the chain was a little lifted, 
went under it ; so did Mr. Chief Justice Shaw, of 
the Supreme Court of the State, though, as the rep- 
resentative of the judicial power of Massachusetts, 
he certainly should have ordered its removal. Mr. 
Richard H. Dana, of counsel for the fugitive, de- 



THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 139 

clined to go under the chain, but jumped over it 
after it was lowered. The officers required every 
person to satisfy them that he had business which 
obliged him to enter. Thus the State tribunals 
were almost literally closed against the people. Mr. 
Dana went at once to the court of Common Pleas, 
over which Judge Wells was presiding, and called 
the attention of that magistrate to tlie indignity. 
Judge Wells dismissed the matter upon affidavits 
that the obstruction had been partially removed. 
He had been a Free Soil man, and his temporizing 
action disappointed many of his old associates ; while 
the course of Mr. Chief Justice Shaw was regarded 
by not a few, who had long admired him as a judge 
and a man, with regret and disapprobation. 

Unquestionably at this time Massachusetts did 
put herself in an attitude of positive and technically 
treasonous hostility to the Federal Government. 
Men of character and of the highest social position 
did undoubtedly countenance and counsel distinct 
disobedience. Yet what men they were ! How 
loyal they were to virtue and freedom and human- 
ity ! How large they were ! How much larger they 
seemed, surrounded by politicians who did not for- 
get to serve themselves while pleading the cause 
of the slave, and prudently blending political and 
pecuniary success ! The Free Soil party of Massa- 
chusetts had several such members, eloquent, learned, 
utterly unselfish, and thoroughly in earnest. Among 
the foremost of those who denounced the extradi- 



140 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

tion of Simms was Horace Mann. IN'aturally he 
was as conservative as he was conscientious. To 
disloyalty, to disorder, to civic irregularity, to the 
enthusiasm which overleaps the law, he must have 
had a natural antipathy. It was only gross injustice 
and cruelty inflicted in the name of law which 
could have restrained him from rebuking those who 
sought to do good by unconstitutional methods. 
He had the gravity and something of the stern in- 
flexibility of the Eoman nature. Even in society, 
he bore himself with consummate dignity. I once 
passed several days with him at a country house ; 
and well do I remember how frightened I was after 
I had rashly corrected him upon some liistorical 
point. It does not much matter what it was, — not 
much that I was right and he was wrong. He an- 
swered me in such a way that I was glad to take 
refuge in silence, and leave the whole company to 
believe that I had committed a gross blunder. When 
the next morning before breakfast, — for he was an 
early riser, — he cut his hand badly in chopping 
wood, — for he also had views of the necessity of 
physical exercise, — I am afraid that I was not so 
sorry for the accident as the others were. When af- 
terward he became president of Antioch College, I 
knew perfectly well that he would miss neither the 
reverence nor the obedience of his students. ^Ir. 
Dana, the x^oet, once said, while standing before 
Brackett's bust of Allston, " He makes us all look 
down ! " There was somethinoj in Horace Mann's 



THE BIRTH OF A GREAT PARTY. 141 

mauner which, at least upon myself, had a similar 
effect. Of his great services to the cause of public 
education in Massachusetts it is unnecessary for me 
to speak. Few know, however, how bad was the 
condition of many of the schools of that State when 
they were committed to his hands. I fear that in 
some of his reforms he was absolutely remorseless. 
I knew three old ladies who had been keeping pub- 
lic schools in Boston for a great number of years, 
and who fell before his vigorous and reformatory 
onslaught. They did not speak of him with much 
affection ; indeed, they regarded him as a peculiarly 
unamiable ogre : but the language in which they 
narrated their grievances was so independent in its 
disposition of the nominative cases and verbs, that 
I could easily understand one of the reasons, at 
least, of Mr. Mann's apparent hard-heartedness. In 
the chapter which will follow this, I shall speak of 
other distinguished Free Soilers of Massachusetts : 
it was proper that this superior person should have 
precedence. 



142 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTEE XL 

OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 

The Know-Nothing Movement in Massachusetts. — Gover- 
nor Gardner. — Mr. Wilson's Election to the Senate. 
— Free Soilers, Republicans, and Coalitionists. — An- 
son Burlingame. — Nathaniel P. Banks. — Francis W. 
Bird. — Governor John A. Andrew. 

"TTTHEN" I went to Boston, in 1854, to become 
V V one of the editors of" The Boston Atlas," pol- 
itics were in a transitory condition. Witli all my 
sympathies upon the side of the Whigs, I had no 
suspicion of the impending demise of the party. I 
thought that it had antislavery savor enough to sus- 
tain it, and I did not anticipate that the people 
would so strongly resent the obsolete notions of the 
Hunker Whigs of Boston. We who did not agree 
with them had tried hard to reconcile radical differ- 
ences. One by one, we had seen the men whom 
we loved and honored go away from us into strange 
and, to us, unpalatable associations. While we 
hated the Fugitive Slave Law, and all the measures 
which were called by the name of compromise, we 
looked back with affection upon the old victories 
and even the old defeats, and asked ourselves if the 
name and the organization might not yet be saved. 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 143 

But the pressure for a thorough revision of party 
lines was too strong for the antislavery Whigs of 
Massachusetts, and the temporizing policy of the 
Fillmore administration, with the course which 
Mr. Webster saw fit to pursue, was too much for 
the loyalty of our fast-diminishing ranks. A great 
many men, I now persuade myself, went away from 
us merely because we were called Whigs. It was 
in vain that not a few of us ventured to the extreme 
verge of Garrisonian abolitionism in our denunci- 
ation of the institution, and our opposition to the 
legislation which it was fondly thought would per- 
petuate it. It w^as in vain that we abandoned all 
policy in the indulgence of our sympathies. Two 
classes of men confronted us with looks of disap- 
proval. The Democratic party, having utterly given 
itself up to the control of the oligarchy of slave- 
holders, denounced us, as it had some right to do. 
The Hunker Whigs, still professing to be with us 
and of us, called by our name and claiming a place 
in our conventions, hated us more heartily and op- 
posed us more obstinately than did our traditional 
enemies, the Democrats. Is it any wonder that we 
grew weary of the name of Whig ? Yet in 1854 
tliere was one battle more to be fought, though little 
did I anticipate its result. It decided most em- 
phatically the canvass of that year. The organiza- 
tion of the Know-Nothing party in Massachusetts 
was one of the most curious of which I have ever 
had any knowledge. It was an anomaly for which 



144 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

it is impossible to account. I went down to Boston 
to engage in my new duties late in the autumn of 
1854, without the slightest idea of the impending 
catastrophe, and actually entertaining the belief that 
Emory Washburn, the Whig candidate for governor, 
would be elected either by the people or the Legis- 
lature. He lacked only about 50,000 votes of 
achieving that success. At this moment, more than 
a quarter of a century afterward, I blush for the 
simplicity with which I anticipated a widely differ- 
ent result. I knew that there was a Know-Nothing 
organization, I was in the way of picking up what- 
ever political intelligence might be floating about ; 
yet, associating every day with men who were in the 
Know-Nothing lodges, and, in the new editorial po- 
sition which I occupied, having every incentive to 
be vigilant and wary, I no more suspected the im- 
pending result than I looked for an earthquake 
which would level the State House and reduce Fa- 
neuil Hall to a heap of ruins. I mention the fact 
to show how faithfully a political secret shared by 
thousands upon thousands — some 80,000 in all — 
was kept. I went to work on " The Atlas " precisely 
as if I believed a decent Whig victory to be certain. 
I knew that the Know-Nothings were doing some- 
thing, but I little knew how much. A week after 
I began my new business, I was passing through 
Congress Street, with my associate, Dr. Brewer. 
AVe met Henry J. Gardner, the Know-Nothing can- 
didate for governor. He took Dr. Brewer aside for 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 145 

a long conversation, and wlien my friend rejoined 
nie he told me tliat Mr. Gardner said, " You had 
better not abuse me as you are abusing me in ' The 
Atlas.' I sliall be elected by a very large majority." 
The dry-goods merchant turned politician under- 
stood matters much better than I did ; for, upon the 
receipt of this private information, not in the least 
daunted, I went back to my desk and predicted his 
defeat more decidedly than ever. It was a perfect 
rout, as all the world knows ; but I remember, with 
pardonable complacency, that I said, the morning 
after the election, that the whole matter w^as an 
empty piece of tomfoolery ; that the Know-Nothing 
party had no reason for being ; that I would give it 
three years of existence, and not one year more. It 
seemed to me then rather like a huge joke than any- 
thing else. Governor Gardner was an excellent 
representative of its thin and shallow insincerity, 
and of its hand-to-mouth expedients. He had no 
opinions ; and if he had possessed any, they would 
have been of no value. We afterward found out how 
he was nominated in the Know-Nothing State Con- 
vention. A delegate, who had as much to do with 
the matter as anybody, told me the story. It was a 
mongrel gathering, full of people who did hate the 
Catholic Irish, and of people who did not. It was 
hard to agree upon a candidate, and my informant 
went to Mr. Gardner and said, " May I assure the 
convention that you are both an antislavery and a 
temperance man ? " " You may say," said the future 
10 



146 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

governor, " that I have always been an antislavery 
man, and that I am a temperance man of fifteen 
years' standing." " Hum ! " said a friend to whom 
I told the story, " how was it when he ran as a 
pro-slavery, Fugitive Slave Law, Webster Whig 
against me for the Common Council and beat me ? " 
"Hum!" said another friend, "how was it that not 
very long ago I was compelled to throw the brandy 
bottle out of the window to keep him from drinking 
any more ? " He was nominated, as I was told by 
one who was well-informed, upon the strength of 
these assurances. The Legislature elected at the 
same time was overwhelmingly Know-Nothing. It 
sent Mr. Wilson to the United States Senate, for he 
too was with the Philistines. There were Know- 
Nothings who would have been glad to defeat him. 
They came slyly to " The Atlas " office and said so ; 
and I dare say, they went back to the State House 
and voted for him. Wliy should n't they ? Was n't 
Mr. Wilson a member of the great American party ? 
When he was running for the vice-presidency, and 
Catholic votes were desirable, if he did not himself 
deny the fact, he suffered others to deny it ; but he 
himself told me that he was a Know-Nothing, and I 
know, upon good information, that he was regularly 
initiated in one lodge after being refused admission 
to another. I might write much, little to its credit, 
of the Know-Nothing Legislature, in which the 
party had everything their own way. It was, I 
suppose, the most ill-assorted legislative body which 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 147 

ever met in this country. There was the outward 
form of a party ; but the maelstrom of the specula- 
tion had engulfed all the floating political rubbish of 
Massachusetts, and when it regurgitated the anom- 
alous collection of sharp semi-statesmen and village 
aspirants, the State House in Boston was made the 
unfortunate receptacle of the discharge. The Legis- 
lature was full of ignorant and inexperienced mem- 
bers, some of whom believed in the nonsense which 
was talked about the Pope of Eome, and the dangers 
to be apprehended from our foreign population ; but 
most of them cared for none of these things, and 
indeed cared for nothing except place and its per- 
quisites and honors. They made a show of reducing 
to something like enactment the loose notions of 
the lodges ; but, after all the odium of the attempts, 
they effected nothing permanent in that way, partly 
because they did not know how, and partly because 
the Constitution of the State and the Constitution 
of the United States were both in their way. They 
sent committees to examine boarding-schools kept 
by Catholic teachers, and the conduct of some of 
the members of these committees brought their 
party into great disrepute and trouble. 'One par- 
ticularly obnoxious representative it was found ne- 
cessary, in common decency, to expel. It was, of 
course, impossible to keep the secret machinery of 
the Know-Nothing lodges in working order, and all 
which made them potential and dangerous became 
necessarily ineffective after the first victory. The 



148 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

whole play was rapidly performed. The able men 
of the organization found their place elsewhere ; the 
ignorant and fanatical disappeared from the public 
eye ; and very few of those who were factitiously 
thrust into notoriety survived the disbanding of this 
motley party of a day. 

Among the clever young men who were brought 
into public affairs by the breaking up of parties 
and by the intense moral interest which political 
controversies had excited, no one was more popular 
and none did more efficient campaign work in Mas- 
sachusetts than Mr. Anson Burlingame. His first 
forensic efforts had the faults of youth. He had 
not been trained in a good school, he had brought 
from the West the bad rhetorical peculiarities of the 
Western stump, he exhibited a certain lack of 
severe culture ; but his good nature was indomitable, 
his verbal resources copious, his way winning ; his 
desire, at a critical period, to be distinguished and 
to do the State a real service, extremely honorable. 
He had a pleasing simplicity in social intercourse, 
and all his associates were ready to spend and to be 
spent in his promotion. I might call him, in no 
discreditable sense, the pet of the Massachusetts 
Free Soil men. Happening at that time to be upon 
the other side, I found in Mr. Burlingame's speeches 
an excellent chance for a good deal of satirical writ- 
ing ; and though I made great fun of him, to my 
astonishment he did not personally resent it. If 
anybody had written of me in the same way, I 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 149 

doubt if I should have found the attack so easy to 
bear. His early rhetorical manner assisted ridicule, 
and it required no great cleverness to call him the 
Phoenix of Free Soil. What I liked in Mr. Burlin- 
game, what immeasurably raised him in my estima- 
tion, after I came personally to know him, was his 
thorough sweetness of disposition and the facility 
with which he forgave. He recounted the jokes 
which had been made against him, and good-humor- 
edly laughed at them, as if they had been made 
about somebody else. He welcomed you as hospit- 
ably to his board as if you had not lampooned him. 
His speeches suggested personal vanity, but those 
who came to understand him best found that he hal 
little or none. I was sometimes embarrassed by the 
frankness with w^hich he spoke of his own deficien- 
cies. "I must study the political history of the 
country," he said to me one day, after he had been 
for some time a member of Congress; and from 
what I subsequently observed of his public career, I 
more than suspect that he adhered to this resolution, 
which other members of Congress might do well to 
consider, for he exhibited, after he became Minis- 
ter to China, a solid capacity for which I had not 
given him credit. When Mr. Brooks made his 
shameful assault upon Senator Sumner, Mr. Burlin- 
game, who was then in the House of Eepresentatives, 
behaved extremely well. The public probably has 
not yet forgotten the fit terms in which, in his place, 
he characterized that barbarous outrage ; and when 



150 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

we found at home that we had a member who was 
ready to fight, if it was necessary or thought to be 
necessary, we did not, I fear, well enough consider 
the absurdity and wickedness of the duello. For 
Massachusetts, at that moment, was in a somewhat 
pugnacious mood, and if Mr. Burlingame had really 
gone out, as he was quite ready to go, I suspect that 
the sternest moralist would not have remembered it 
against him. "I fight," he said significantly to me, 
when indignation was at the hottest; and he proved 
it to be no idle boast. I recall how his conduct 
on the occasion quite restored him to the good 
opinion of a young Irish lawyer in Boston, who 
was in a maze of astonishment that nobody had 
challenged Mr. Brooks, and who, with very slight 
encouragement, would himself have gone to Wash- 
ington to vindicate the outraged dignity of the old 
commonwealth. The last time I saw Mr. Burlin- 
game, we walked up and down the sands of Nahant 
together after the election of Mr. Lincoln, and talked 
of the possible results of that event. He was, as usual, 
full of enthusiasm. He had just been beaten in his 
own district, but he looked forward with alacrity to 
his employment by the new administration in a 
diplomatic capacity. He was sent to Vienna ; but 
Austria, remembering his eloquent vindication of 
Hungarian independence, refused to receive him. 
How fortunate it was that he was thus repelled 
it is needless to say. He was at once accredited to 
China, and awakened a confidence in the govern- 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 151 

ment of tliat country wliicli led to the most impor- 
tant results. 

Of those Democratic recruits wlio came into the 
Eepublican party by the devious paths of tlie coali- 
tion was Mr. Nathaniel P. Banks, since well enough 
known in national affairs. Mr. Banks's youth was 
passed in a position which is usually spoken of as 
humble : he was, I believe, a bobbin-boy in a Waltham 
cotton factory, and subsequently a good machinist. 
His peculiar success has been held up, in certain 
cheap biographies, as a stimulative example to other 
bobbin-boys, and to boys in general. He was rhe- 
torical from the start. He delivered temperance and 
other addresses; he tried his hand at editing a news- 
paper in his native Waltham; he essayed the stage, 
and once acted Claude Melnotte in a Boston theatre; 
I have been informed that he even exhibited ability 
as a dancing-master. When lie made speeches 
setting forth the heartless way in which the aspira- 
tions of poor but clever young men were crushed by 
the Whig aristocracy of Massachusetts, it was not 
thought to be either inopportune or unfair to remind 
him of what he was and of what he had been. He 
was either extremely fortunate or his theories were 
unsound. For a time everything went well with 
him. Mr. Polk gave him a pretty place in the 
Boston Custom House. Waltham sent him as a 
Democrat to the House of Eepresentatives. Three 
years after, tlie coalition made him Speaker of the 
House, and he developed particular tact as a presid- 



152 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

ing officer. The coalition chose him to the Thirty- 
third Congress; he gradually drifted entirely away 
from the Democratic party. His luck was the luck 
of an orient fable. Speaker of the National House; 
governor of Massachusetts; president of a railway; 
major-general ; again in Congress, — office for a time 
seemed to come to him without asking, though the 
game changed at last. He went with the rest into 
the Know-Nothing ranks, and if his design was to 
kill the Whig party, he at least had never been a 
Whig, so that there w^as no taint of parricide in his 
speculation. Somebody remarked of Lord Thurlow 
that there never was anybody so wise as he looked. 
Mr. Banks had something of the same sagacious 
manner. He said what he had to say with a pro- 
found gravity wdiich filled the listener with vague 
ideas of uncommon perspicacity. It was during the 
winter of 1855-1856 that I first heard an intimation 
of the probable nomination of Colonel Fremont for 
the presidency. It was at a little dinner at the 
Tremont House, in Boston, at which only three or 
four persons were present, and among them the 
Hon. Charles W. Upham, an ex-member of Con- 
gress, to whom was subsequently entrusted the 
writing of one of the campaign biographies of the 
explorer. Just after the soup, Mr. Banks nominated 
Colonel Fremont, and said that he would soon write 
a letter in which the wrongs of bleeding Kansas 
would be duly set forth. I particularly remember 
that Mr. Banks was perfectly sure that Colonel 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 153 

Fremont could carry Pennsylvania: he was such a 
man, he said, as the Quakers would be likely to vote 
for. He did not probably anticipate that the Demo- 
crats would spend so much money in buying up the 
State, and perhaps he did not expect that Mr. 
Buchanan would be nominated. I may remark in 
passing that the Pennsylvania Eepublicans showed 
no great moderation in sending to Massachusetts for 
money, nor any great sagacity in spending whatever 
they obtained. To go back to Mr. Banks, I may 
add that I was much impressed by the cleverness 
with which he discussed the political situation : he 
seemed to have a prescience of every characteristic 
of the coming canvass, save the disastrous defeat 
with which it terminated. Very soon came the 
anticipated letter from Colonel Fremont, and a 
pretty and well-written letter it was. Perhaps Mr. 
Banks wrote it. It was handed to me for the pub- 
lication in " The Boston Atlas " and I constructed a 
beautiful leading article about it, in which bleeding 
Kansas and the colonel's march across the continent 
were agreeably and forcibly blended. I thought it 
a great stroke of journalistic enterprise to get the 
letter exclusively ; and when my friend, Mr. Elizur 
Wright, Jr., who was editing " The Boston Chronicle" 
on the other side of the street, sent over to beg an 
advance copy of the important document, I was 
hard-hearted enough to refuse it ; though this self- 
ishness, I am bound to admit, did not in the least 
diminish JMr. Wright's good-nature. The nomination 



154 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

of Colonel Fremont came in time, but before it was 
made we committed in the Atlas office about as 
bad a blunder as possible. Our correspondent at 
Washington was Mr. Simon P. Hanscombe, a man 
with a prodigious passion for sending news. He 
was enterprising and generally trustworthy, although 
his letters bore — and repaid — careful supervision. 
He took it into his head to send us a despatch contain- 
ing the startling information that Colonel Fremont 
was a Eoman Catholic and would not, therefore, be 
a desirable candidate. This precious news came 
late ; for some reason I had gone home earlier than 
usual, and the night-editor, with a plentiful lack of 
sagacity, printed the dreadful disclosure, which, 
within a fortnight, was reprinted in large capitals 
in every Democratic newspaper in the country. 
When I saw the despatch in the morning it quite 
took away my appetite for my breakfast. I did not 
myself care a groat whether Colonel Fremont was a 
Catholic, a Protestant, or neither ; but it must be 
remembered that the absurd Know-Nothing prej- 
udice ac^ainst the Eoman Catholic Church was then 
rampant, and that we could hardly expect to elect 
Colonel Fremont without Know-Nothing votes or 
without a Know-Nothing national nomination. The 
story started upon its travels in seven-league boots, 
and though we protested and explained and denied, 
we were never able to arrest its mischievous mean- 
derings. People who read it then may like to know 
its origin. It gave us no end of trouble, which 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 155 

might have been saved if Mr. Hanscombe, who was 
one of the best-intentioned men in the world, had 
been just a little less smart, or if I had gone home 
an hour or so later. 

Among the leading men of those times was Mr. 
Francis W. Bird, the best known of all Mas- 
sachusetts politicians who have held no national 
office. Mr. Bird was — if I may borrow Dr. John- 
son's classification — eminently "a clubable man." 
The affairs of the party were not conducted without 
a modicum of festivity, and Mr. Bird liked good 
fellowship, being never haj^pier than when he could 
make himself useful in the conduct of the sym- 
posium. When the Free Soil lights met in Cornhill 
Court for consultation and dietary refreshment, it 
was Mr. Bird who broiled the venison and gave us 
the tid-bits hot and hot. These were pleasant 
gatherings, where, without formality we sat at the 
board to plan campaigns, to discuss political chances, 
and to ameliorate the austerities of politics by a 
moderate conviviality. And who, of all seated 
there, was better liked and more thoroughly respected 
than Frank Bird, as those who were entitled to do 
so by the familiarity of friendship, and those who were 
not, were in the habit of calling him ? He was a man 
whose honor was never doubted ; whose word made 
the precautionary provisions of his bond ridiculous; 
who had his own way of thinking, but was entirely 
loyal to his party while he saw fit to remain in it. 
He was so positive in his personal opinions, whether 



156 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

they were about the Fugitive Slave Law or the 
Hoosac Tunnel, that he lived and moved in daily, 
and I may say hourly danger of bolting ; so that I 
was not in the least surprised when he walked over 
to the camp of the enemy, and proclaimed himself 
one of those Democrats from whom he had received 
and to whom he had returned, with compound 
interest, so many blows. Upon the least suspicion 
of anything wrong in the ranks, he thought nothing 
of moving promptly over to the other side. I have 
sometimes wondered if he broiled the venison and 
uncorked the champagne with the same alacrity at 
the Democratic headquarters ; and I am certain 
that he would be welcomed back again with no end 
of cheers by his old associates, only too glad to for- 
get and to forgive, if there were anything to be 
forgiven. 

At the Cornhill-square dinners Governor John A. 
Andrew was always welcome when present, and 
much missed when absent. He was the most hon- 
est, genial, and generous of men. He was firm in 
his convictions, without bigotry ; thoroughly con- 
scientious, without asceticism or narrowness ; and 
had been kept out of public employment for several 
years by a stern integrity which nothing could 
shake. He seemed of. too sweet a nature for politi- ' 
cal strife, but though he could be as gentle as a 
woman, he was easily aroused to righteous wrath by 
any tale of wrong or cruelty. When the Mas- 
sachusetts soldiers were slaughtered in the streets of 



OLD PARTIES AND POLITICIANS. 157 

Baltimore by a disloyal mob, it was Governor An- 
drew who telegraphed that their bodies should be 
" tenderly " cared for at the expense of the State. 
Of his record as " a war governor " it is not neces- 
sary for me to say one word. All the country knows 
how noble and entirely satisfactory it is. It must 
be remembered that Governor Andrew was an 
original Abolitionist, or Liberty party man, when to 
be such was to surrender hope of much brilliant 
professional success in Boston. He could always 
say, as Theodore Parker did, ""When the laws of 
Massachusetts or the laws of the Union conflict 
with the laws of God, I would keep God's law in 
preference, though the heavens should fall." The 
people of Massachusetts were only too glad to make 
such a man their governor, by the largest vote ever 
cast for any candidate for the office. There was no 
prominent Eepublican in Massachusetts who made 
a cleaner record. His moral courage was refreshing, 
when so many were willing to do evil that good 
might come. When his party passed their prohibi- 
tory law, he, who did not pretend to be a total ab- 
stinence man, but whose political and personal 
associations were mainly with the temperance people, 
did not hesitate to oppose the law which he regarded 
as an infraction of liberty, nor did he refuse a re- 
tainer from the trade when his services were desired 
before the legislative committee. He died too soon 
for the State, for his friends, for tliat great public 
usefulness of which he was capable ; and he left be- 
hind him no citizen more thoroughly upright and 
more universally beloved. 



158 REMimSCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 



CHAPTER XII. 

STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 

Charles Sumner. — William H. Seward. — The Boston Con- 
servatives. — George S. Hillard. — Frederick Douglass 

AND the GaRRISONIANS. 

IN the present chapter I shall continue to speak 
mainly of men. Events are usually better re- 
membered than those who were actors in them ; and 
even of characters whose record is prominent in his- 
tory, the memory soon becomes mythical and dim. 
The recollections of a contemporary, however unim- 
portant they may otherwise be, may have some value 
and some interest — if nothing be extenuated and 
nothing set down in malice — as the impressions of 
one who had an opportunity of personally studying 
those whom he attempts to portray. 

The Eepublican party was predestinate; the 
Massachusetts Coalition was but an episode in the 
steady and ceaseless march of the inevitable. From 
any abstract moral standpoint, it was indefensible, 
and it was particularly open to attack because it 
made large pretensions to superior conscientiousness, 
and talked with peculiar volubility of the shame of 
doing evil that good might come. After all these 
changes in the body politic, many of which I regard 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 159 

not merely with approbation but profound gratitude, 
my opinion of the Massachusetts Coalition of 1851, 
which I afterwards opposed to the best of my 
humble ability, is not changed. It sent Mr. Sumner 
to the Senate ; but he would have gone there soon 
enough without recourse to dubious methods. He 
began his public life as a Whig. Most clever 
young men of the State did the same. But he was 
from the start a man of dissent. I do not believe 
that there was any selfish method in what was de- 
nounced as his radical madness by the smug con- 
servatism of Boston ; but I do think that he had a 
native love of attracting attention, and that he 
gravitated naturally to startling opposition. He 
first made a noise as a peace man ; and his oration 
given in Boston on the Fourth of July, 1845, on 
" The True Grandeur of Nations," in which he de- 
nounced not only war but preparations for war, gave 
great offence to the young Boston gentlemen who 
held commissions or marched as privates in the 
crack volunteer companies of that city, — " The 
Tigers," " The Cadets," " The Ancient and Honorable 
Artillery." The oration made much fuss, and helped 
to embitter the hard feeling with which Mr. Sum- 
ner was afterwards regarded in particular circles. 
Naturally, he became one of the Conscience Whigs, 
— those honest folk who made the State Conven- 
tions of the party uncomfortable. The lines were 
soon and straightly drawn. Mr. Sumner, the pet 
of Judge Story, the lecturer at the Harvard Law 



160 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

School, the editor of " The American Jurist," went 
over to the Free Soil party in 1848, and spoke and 
voted for Mr. Van Buren. Beacon Street was aghast, 
as it had reason to be. It was still more painfully 
astonished when, three years after, the Democrats 
and Free Soilers sent this bolting, higher-law man 
to occupy the old chair of Daniel Webster. The 
political history of the senator from that time for- 
ward is too well known to require a new narrative 
here. After the brutal assault which he sustained 
in 1856 at the murderous hands of Preston S. Brooks, 
he was never the same man. Something of his 
youthful, salient force was gone, and he was con- 
stantly laboring under the disadvantages of ill 
health. He had not originally that practical ca- 
pacity for public affairs which distinguished his 
colleague, Mr. Wilson; and the tendency of his 
oratorical efforts was rather toward the judicial than 
the forensic. There was the least touch of the ped- 
antic in his speeches, and just a suspicion of arro- 
gance in their delivery. He was himself greatly 
self sustained with such a feeling that he was right 
that it amounted to complacency. He was a scholar, 
and he put too much scholarship into his senatorial 
addresses. Great orator as he was, he neither pos- 
sessed nor claimed any remarkable ability as a 
debater. . He moved slowly, and did his fine things 
with careful elaboration. It was no credit to the 
Eepublican party of Massachusetts that a faction of 
it would have been glad to remove him from the 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 161 

Senate ; if he was in any danger of that indignity, 
after his noble support of Mr. Greeley for the presi- 
dency in 1872, as I suppose that he was, death 
kindly saved him from the mortification. His last 
years were variously and cruelly embittered ; it was 
all a tragic ending of a career so brilliantly begun. 
The last time I saw him was in the Tribune office 
during the canvass of 1872. As he sat waiting for 
the editor, whom he wished to see, I glanced at 
him from my desk, with a feeling of pain such as I 
have seldom experienced respecting a public man. 
The day was warm, and he had evidently been ex- 
hausted by the toil of mounting the stairs. "Eheii ! 
quantum mutatus ab illo ! " I said to myself as I 
saw how hard fortune had broken that noble form, 
and bitter experiences, public and private, stolen its 
muscular elasticity. I remembered him, standing 
sturdily upon our old platforms, almost arrogant 
in the consciousness of intellectual and physical 
strength, full of early vigor, and dilating with the 
courage of opinion, — the Ajax about wdiom the 
young men of Massachusetts rallied for many a 
moral contest, and followed in the onset of many 
a forlorn political hope. This, then, was what they 
had brought him to, — the murderous, man-stealing 
oligarchy ! This was the martyr made so by " the 
institution " in that last death-throe, when it could 
argue no longer, but could only wildly and fero- 
ciously strike ! All criticism of the man and of his 
methods, however much I might be disposed to in- 
11 



162 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

dulge in it, was silenced by that spectacle. I might 
doubt much else ; I might question whether Mr. 
Sumner had always been wise in debate ; whether 
his passion for justice had not led him to say things 
better left unsaid ; whether he had not just a trace 
of the dilettante in his great nature; whether he 
was not somewhat predisposed to personal com- 
plaint : but I should as soon question the sun-rise, 
or the ebb and flow of the tide, or the Copernican 
system, as his entire and perfect integrity. There 
never was a man upon whom the harness of party 
sat so loosely. He began by bolting ; he went on 
bolting ; as a bolter he ended. The Eepublicans of 
Massachusetts, who would never have been a party 
at all if he and a few other men had not dared to 
act and speak for themselves, are now a little 
shocked when any of their great associates show 
signs of restive disloyalty; but they found long 
before he died that Mr. Sumner was not to be 
managed nor coaxed nor driven into saying or 
doing anything which his unimpaired conscience did 
not approve. When Mr. Eliot offered a resolution 
for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law in the 
House of Eepresentatives, having the misfortune to 
be a Whig, the Free Sellers and Democrats of the 
first Massachusetts District, who wanted to turn 
Mr. Eliot out and to put in their own man, de- 
nounced the resolution as imprudent and premature. 
Such were the tricks even of philanthrophic politi- 
cians who made much of their delicate sense of 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 163 

truth and justice. Then editing a newspaper which 
was proud to support Mr. Eliot, I thought of one 
way of silencing these fastidious gentry. I boldly 
wrote to Mr. Sumner, then the demi-god of the 
Free Soil people, and asked him if he thought Mr. 
Eliot's motion to have been imprudent and prema- 
ture. The result showed that I had not mis- 
taken the man. Mr. Sumner was not at all afraid 
of having such a member as Thomas D. Eliot re- 
elected to Congress. I got the answer which I 
wanted by return mail, and it was exactly what 
I had anticipated. " I entirely approve the course 
of Mr. Eliot," wrote Mr. Sumner. " Why should I 
disapprove it when it is that which I have myself 
pursued in the Senate ? " I printed the letter, and 
silenced the people over at the other office, at least 
upon that point. " You will not get another letter 
from Mr. Sumner," said their editor, with a suffu- 
sion of gall in his countenance; "he has been 
written to." I laughed at him. " You do not know 
Mr. Sumner," I said, " as well as I do. I can get 
twenty letters from the senator, if there should be 
the like occasion for writing them. He has a con- 
science ; but you others — well, how is it with 
you ? " If I have dwelt too long upon the character 
and conduct of tliis great man, it has been because, 
of all the public persons whom it has been my 
good or ill fortune to know, he seems to me, after 
tlie lapse of all these years, one of the brightest 
and purest. Scholar, orator, philanthropist, re- 



164 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

former, jurist, lawyer and law-maker, lie was never 
a mere politician, for which let us thank God and 
take courage ! 

If there is anything which confirms my belief in 
the general tendency of human nature toward the 
honest and the honorable, it is a contemplation of 
the public career of AVilliam H. Seward. I doubt 
if he was trained in a good political school. John 
Adams, sitting, in his old age, over his old folios in 
Quincy, bitterly remembering and sometimes speak- 
ing bitterly, was wont to complain with sufficient 
frankness of the corruption and the self-seeking of 
New-York politics ; and curiously to sj)eculate, as he 
rayed out the conclusions of his political wisdom, 
whether his son, John Quincy Adams, could possibly 
be elected to the presidency with New York against 
him. Mr. Seward certainly began his public life 
under temptations to swerve from the path of strict 
political honesty, which might have proved fatal to 
a less virtuous character. But the man Avas finer 
than his surroundings. He seemed always to be 
trying to get away from the schemers and the 
shufflers, the intriguers and the tricksters. If he 
started with some use of the anti-Masonic excite- 
ment, when he was hardly thirty years of age, to 
secure a seat in the New- York Senate, he grew 
speedily wiser and larger in all his ways and 
methods. It is no part of my present purpose to 
write elaborately of his political career ; but I wish 
to express, not for the first time, the conviction that 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 165 

Mr. Seward could seldom, in his whole public life, 
for a moment, however tempted, divest himself in 
his action of his strict love of right. He seemed 
always to move about in an atmosphere of integrity ; 
and I am honestly of the opinion that, to this day, 
maugre his great services at critical periods, the 
man is not honored and admired as he should be. I 
sometimes wish that we had him now. But I am 
wandering from the path which I have proposed to 
myself: let me return to the record. I have in 
my mind's eye a picture which I may endeavor, 
however inadequately, to reproduce. It was upon a 
dreary day in December, 1855, that my friend, 
Colonel Ezra Lincoln, said to me in Boston, " Mr. 
Seward is at the Tremont House. Let us go up and 
see him." Mr. Seward was on his way to Plymouth, 
where, upon thQ coming Forefathers' Day, he was to 
deliver the oration. I was only too happy to accept 
the invitation. I would say nothing more of the 
interview if I did not think that all the circum- 
stances afforded some illustrations of the character 
and career of Mr, Seward. We found the senator 
and statesman solitary and alone, sitting by the fire 
in the gentleman's parlor, reading a book which was 
just published, and which proved to be Lewes's 
" Life of Goethe." He made some critical remarks 
upon the work, and said that he had gone down that 
morning to Messrs. Ticknor & Fields' to procure it. 
With some lingering literary tastes which many 
years of hard, practical work and inadequate culti- 



166 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

vation had failed entirely to extinguish, I warmed at 
once to a member of Congress who cared for Goethe, 
and could find consolation in reading him at a tavern- 
fire on a foggy December morning. I thought then 
that Mr. Seward seemed to be a little hurt that 
nobody had before called upon him ; for his arrival 
had been announced in the morning newspapers. 

He said, "I have seen nothing of ,nor of , 

nor of " ; and then, shutting his book with a mild 

emphasis, he asked when the next train started for 
Plymouth, where his oration was the day following 
to be delivered. I am in doubt whether he said, 
in so many words, that he was anxious to be away, 
but I caught his feeling from every look and ges- 
ture. I knew well why he had seen nothing of 

, nor of , nor of . The reader, if he will 

consider the date (1855), will understand why Beacon 
Street and other respectable streets of the West 
End forgot that Mr. Seward was in town. He was 
emphatically a man of conscience, and conscience 
just then was working hard to hold its own in the 
vicinity of the Tremont House. He went away to 
speak of " The Pilgrims and Liberty," close by the 
Eock of the Forefathers, and to say once more, as 
he had often said, that fidelity to truth was the only 
conservative heroism. It was something to have 
seen him only the day before he said, " Come forward, 
then, ye nations, states, and races, — rude, savage, 
oppressed, and despised, enslaved or mutually war- 
ring among yourselves as ye are, — upon whom the 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 167 

morning star of civilization hath either not yet 
dawned, or hath only dimly broken amid clouds and 
storms, and receive the assurance its shining shall 
yet be complete, and its light be poured down on all 
alike." Those who in the least comprehend Mr. 
Seward's character will also comprehend why I 
venture to quote the words. When the telegraph 
brouoht to us the intellig^ence of the death of Mr. 
Seward, 1 had occasion to take a rapid survey of his 
public career. The labor was favorable to a vivid 
estimate of his character, nor could I fail to be 
impressed by evidences of a tender humanity which 
at first softened and then elevated his nature. It 
was not by accident nor through any design of the 
self-seeking politician that he was so often found 
upon the side of the weak, the helpless, and the 
depressed ; that in courts of justice he was so fre- 
quently the advocate of those who but for him 
might have been without one ; that he never failed 
in season or out of season, to enter his protest against 
the cruelty of caste distinctions ; and that he was 
among the first of our great men to recognize the 
true nature of the antislavery discussion, and to 
j)oint out the inevitable conflict which was at hand. 
He had temptations enough at certain times to have 
gone to the wrong side, if he had been simply 
selfish. He desired the presidency as other public 
men, not a few, have for some reason, to»me inscrut- 
able, desired it : but when so many were conceding, 
he made no concession ; when compromise was held 



168 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

to be tlie test of patriotism, he scorned to compro- 
mise ; and he kept up with the progress of public 
opinion always, and generally he was in advance of 
it. His greatest services to the republic were his 
last ; and the masterly manner in which he managed 
the foreign affairs of the country in the hour of its 
mortal peril, and when consummate ability, cease- 
less vigilance, and unbending firmness alone saved 
us from a foreign war, will pass into the history of 
these times, and as honorably perpetuate his name 
as if he had been elected President, and elected 
President again. 

Boston was at that time passing, at a pace which 
to some of us seemed singularl}^ retarded, from the 
unreasoning conservatism which books and thought 
and the inevitable catastrophe which was impending 
had failed to enlighten. There were men in the 
pulpit, at the bar, or engaged in other liberal avoca- 
tions, who utterly failed to appreciate the situation, 
and among the most polished and cultivated of 
these was Mr. George Stillman Hillard. He was 
contemporary with Mr. Sumner at Harvard College, 
graduating two years before him, and each had an 
excellent prospect of success in public life. If any- 
body had thought it worth while to make wagers 
upon the future achievements of these young men, 
I suppose that the odds would have been about 
equal. It was only when the time for moral muscle 
arrived that the superiority of Mr. Sumner's fibre 
became observable. In the storm of politics which 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS, 169 

soon came, Mr. Hillard, who could write brilliant 
essays, construct clever books, which the committees 
were only too glad to introduce into the schools, 
tell in elegant language of his travels in Italy, 
and critically collate the works of Walter Savage 
Landor, proved how little he understood the science 
of public affairs. I take him, with all his merits, as 
a type. He had read in a week more books, per- 
haps, than Mr. Henry Wilson had read in his life- 
time ; but all of them together had not given him 
the wisdom which the shoemaker had brought from 
his bench to the State House. As the battle raged 
more and more fiercely, it was a positive pain to 
hear Mr. Hillard talk. He thought that all might 
be serene again if only people would hold their 
tongues, if only Boston would send back fugitive 
slaves without making any foolish fuss about the 
matter ; if public men would read Burke and " The 
Boston Courier," and profit by the reading ; if the 
compromise measures were treated with obedient 
respect; if voters would vote with the moribund 
Whig party, for Bell and Everett, and not for 
Lincoln. With revolution at hand, with civil war 
impending, with the hearts of men full of indigna- 
tion and protest, this amiable Harvard scholar went 
on smiling and elegantly protesting, and wondering 
why his fellow-creatures should be so restive. It 
was as if some unhappy victim of the flood, perched 
upon a rock not quite submerged, had delivered a 
neat address, with many classical allusions, upon 



170 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the utter immorality of rain-water. There was no 
fault to find with these belated gentlemen, these 
Boston Whigs who fell, without a murmur and out 
of sheer fright, into the beckoning arms of the 
Democratic party, — no fault whatever, except that 
they were children in such a crisis, and should have 
been born in the last century or in the next. They 
were not exactly weak; there was nothing feeble 
about Mr. George Lunt and Mr. George T. Curtis 
and Mr. Eufus Choate and the Eev. Dr. Adams, 
who was Mr. Choate's conscience-keeper, and allowed 
the lawyer small use of his own property, — nothing 
feeble except their eye-sight, which would not see 
the near future, and their ear-shot, which failed to 
reach the roar of the approaching hurricane. Of 
these deluded persons, Mr. Hillard was not the 
blindest and the deafest. He seemed sometimes to 
have some faint inkling of what was coming ; but 
he only put on his greatcoat, bought a new umbrella, 
and then went back to his Italian studies. He was 
the man who charged Mr. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., 
in debate, with spurning tlie hand which fed him ; 
meaning no harm, but merely intending to insinuate 
that, as Mr. Dana made his money by practising law 
in Boston, he ought therefore to be a pro-Slavery, 
Compromise, Webster Whig. Mr. Dana grew sev- 
eral inches taller as he retorted, " No hand feeds me !" 
And Mr. Hillard grew several inches shorter, and 
remained so ever aj|ter. 

I have spoken of several distinguished white 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 171 

orators ; let me mention one who was not of that 
favored class. It was my good fortune to listen to 
the earliest rhetorical efforts of a man who has since 
won wide fame as a public speaker ; and I question 
whether any of his later speeches have surpassed in 
natural vigor and a certain indescribable race those 
which Frederick Douglass made while he was still 
a day-laborer upon the piers, or was engaged in the 
still humbler occupation of whitewashing in New- 
Bedford, Mass. He became the most notable of 
all the fugitive slaves who sought that well-known 
asylum of the oppressed. We had hundreds of these 
self-emancipated people in the town, and a thrifty 
and Avell-behaved class they were ; but none of them 
won the celebrity of Mr. Douglass. If he could 
read and write at all, when he came to us, it was 
very little of either ; but he worked hard to m-ake 
up for his lack of early culture, and he soon won 
the confidence and respect, not only of his neighbors, 
but of the antislavery men and women throughout 
the State. It was with some difficulty that he was 
persuaded to address a meeting called to consider 
the case of the fugitive, George Latimer, which was 
then exciting the whole commonwealth ; but he had 
not spoken five minutes before I saw that he was 
an uncommon man. As he went on, warming with 
his topic, he not only exhibited no hesitation, but 
poured forth choice and unique words with a skill 
and copiousness which left hardly anything to be 
desired ; and when he described the poor runaway, 



172 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

clinging to the base of Bunker Hill Monument, 
shrieking in vain for succor to the God of liberty 
upon the free soil of Massachusetts, he evoked from 
the audience a response which was a perfect storm 
of applause. His was pure natural oratory, requir- 
ing no allowances, and as free from turgidity and 
bad taste as if he had been trained in the severe 
school of Webster, or had studied to good purpose 
the classical orations of Edward Everett. T could 
almost fancy that I heard some well-booted Grecian 
arguing of the leaguer of Troy. Mr. Douglass had 
a native quickness which even then he frequently 
exhibited, and which, if he had been called to the 
duties of legislation, must have won for him a high 
reputation as a debater. His presence of mind was 
perfect. Antislavery speeches were then frequently 
interrupted, but the sharpest of such intruders never 
meddled with Mr. Douglass without being sorry for 
the temerity. I recall an instance of his quickness. 
He had been speaking with more plainness than 
urbanity of Northern dough-faces and dirt-eaters, 
and had quoted against them the text, "And the 
Lord God said unto the serpent. Because thou hast 
done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and 
above every beast of the field ; upon thy belly shalt 
thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy 
life." Pretty soon Mr. Douglass said something 
which provoked the inevitable hiss. Drawing him- 
self up to his full height, and pointing to the place 
from which the sibilant sound had proceeded, he 



STATESMEN, POLITICIANS, AND ORATORS. 173 

exclaimed, " I told you so ! Upon thy belly slialt 
thou go, dust shalt thou eat, and hiss all the days of 
thy life." The interpolated words gave the text an 
additional point, and the gentleman who had hissed, 
hissed no more that night. This reminds me of 
what poor Harry Clapp said in his abolition days, 
wdien he too was hissed, as, I am bound to say, he 
delighted to be : " There is always that sound when 
the waters of truth drop into the fires of hell," — a 
remark which secured quiet and good order for at 
least fifteen minutes. The abolitionists of those 
days liked to say startling things, and did not 
always exhibit the best taste. I suppose that they 
w^ould have argued that truth was better than taste ; 
but it never seemed to occur to them that overstate- 
ment of truth might be substantial falsehood. One 
might be a pretty good antislavery man ; but if he 
saw fit to vote, and did not see fit to shriek for a 
dissolution of the Union, he was usually set down 
as no better than a man-owner, with the unpleasant 
aggravation of being a hypocrite. I have long for- 
given these harsh judgments ; nobody can be more 
willing to admit than I am the extraordinary ser- 
vices of Mr. Garrison and his friends, but I am 
sorry that they should have thought us in the gall 
of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, and that 
they should not better have comprehended that they 
had no monopoly of benevolence, of philanthropy, 
and of political wisdom. 



174 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 

The Stage Forty Years ago and Now. — Clara Fisher. 

— William F. Gates. — Thomas Hamblin. — A Heavy 
Villain. — The Old Tragic Actresses. — Mrs. Sloman. 

— The Elder Booth. 

MAY I be permitted to evade for a moment the 
splendors and tlie squalors of political annals, 
— to pass from the reality of affairs, if only for a 
single chapter, to the mimic scenes of the drama ? 
Having been in my time a constant haunter of play- 
houses, I now hardly once a year see the curtain go 
up and down, '' slow falling to the prompter's bell." 
I content myself with reading the illustrated posters 
upon the hoardings, and the lively and admirable 
criticisms of my friend, the first of dramatic critics, 
Mr. William Winter, whose word I do not fear to 
take. When, now and then, somebody gives me a 
pass, or I spare a few shillings and go inside, I am 
pretty sure to come away irritated, or at best unsat- 
isfied. Those who should know assure me that it 
is my own fault ; that the stage is as brilliant, that 
the players are as good as ever ; that I am a pother- 
ing old sexagenarian, with j)redestinate doubts of 
the present, and that sad, strong yearning for the 



A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 175 

past wlncli comes to most, if only tliey live long 
enough and attend the requisite number of fune- 
rals. Perhaps so. I do not care to talk much 
about it. I only shake my gray locks at them, and 
still ask the privilege of doubting. But is there 
anybody, however old, who has forgotten his first 
play, about whicli Elia wrote so sweetly, — the en- 
chantment wliich lasted such a little while, the 
magian splendor of the scene, the thrill which filled 
his heart at the heroic, the sweet, impulsive, inno- 
cent laughter with which he greeted the comedy ? 
In 1838 Dr. Way land stood up, clothed in his com- 
pletest official terrors, and warned us not to go to 
the Dorrance Street Theatre, which that night was 
to restore the drama to Providence. He said that 
if he heard of any students who were professors of 
religion attending the play, he should report them 
to their respective churches ; those delinquents who 
were yet unconverted he threatened with suspen- 
sion. We listened with due gravity, and those who 
had tickets for the performance in their pockets 
were especially solemn. We went, all the same, 
witli only the precaution of a little disguise. I my- 
self borrowed another man's coat, and the friend who 
went with me, now a grave lawyer, tied back his 
long hair. When fairly within the mysterious walls, 
I thought it the most beautiful place wliich my eyes 
had ever seen ; in my memory, as I do not mind 
saying, it is still most beautiful. 

The opening address, which was written by Mrs. 



176 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Sarah Helen Whitman, was spoken by Mrs. Maeder, 
the Clara Fisher who, in her childhood and girlhood, 
had delighted, upon both sides of the sea, so many 
audiences. She played that night the Widow Cheer- 
ly in " The Soldier's Daughter," old Manager Cherry's 
old-fashioned comedy. She had not tlien lost alto- 
gether her girlish es'prit. She came gliding upon 
the scene full of life and laughter, a perfect mistress 
of her art, so that we deemed every motion graceful 
and every tone delicious. Her early theatrical train- 
ing had made her an adept in all the business of 
the stage ; she was still a little queen, or at least 
we thought so, — we boys gazing at her from the pit. 
She was at once patlietic and huniorous, now serious 
and then full of badinage and elasticity, always 
showing traces of that dainty taste and naivde 
which years before had turned the heads of num- 
berless young gentlemen. We did not mind how 
old she was — she was young enough for us. Her 
husband was one of the managers of the theatre, and 
she worked like a slave all through the season to 
sustain its dubious fortunes, playing everything, — 
from Desdemona to Myrtillo in " The Broken Sword" ; 
and, as the receipts grew smaller and smaller, she 
toiled cheerfully, though perhaps she had some sad 
recollections of the time when a mob gathered about 
the box-office to secure tickets for her performances, 
and when hornpipes and the four-footed favorites of 
the turf were named after her both in England and 
America. Turn over any rubbishy lot of old plays 



A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 177 

in a second-hand bookstore, and the odds are that you 
will find her portrait in character. She outlived her 
girlish glories ; but it must have been to her some 
consolation that she had been so universally and 
justly admired, and had given so many pleasure- 
seekers innocent and refined enjoyment. In spite 
of the temptations which beset her, she kept her 
honest name ; and those who talk foolishly about 
the immorality of the stage may be surprised and 
perhaps pained to learn that she was a good wife, a 
good mother, and a good woman altogether. 

The Jonathan Quaint of the evening was Mr. 
William F. Gates, always a favorite in New York, 
and, with the exception of Mr. Warren, of Boston, the 
best eccentric comedian whom I have ever seen. In 
his manner Mr. Gates was said to resemble strongly 
Harley, the great London actor; and Ellen Tree, 
who went down to the Bowery Theatre when she 
was first in America, expressly to see him, is said 
to have exclaimed, " Good Heavens ! Harley ! " as 
he came on. He had that rather necessary quality 
of a comic actor, the ability to excite laughter. He 
did not seem to have a single grain of pathos in his 
composition ; the inflections of his voice, the varia- 
tions of his physiognomy, the contortions of his 
limbs, his walking, his sitting, his entrance and his 
exit, all were comic, whatever he might be acting. 
He had the talent of extracting fun from the least 
promising character, and might now, if living, and 
engaged for the purpose, impart hilarity even to an 
12 



175 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

original New York drama. He was immense in 
queer valets and footmen, — tliose droll examples of 
servility, dishonesty, and eccentricity with which 
the stage then abounded. He did nothing badly, 
and whether he was to play Touchstone or Dogberry 
or The First Grave-Digger, or some light farcical 
character, he was as sure of our roars as we were of 
our diversion. I thought no part could be as funny 
in the text as he made it, until I obtained the book, 
and found that he was always letter-perfect. Per- 
haps there is to-day in New Yolk some venerable 
and most respectable citizen, who, when a boy, fre- 
quented the old Bowery Theatre, and esteemed " Bill 
Gates " the perfection of a droll, as he held Thomas 
Hamblin to be the greatest of tragic actors. When 
Mr. Hamblin came to Providence to play a short 
engagement, the Bowery had just undergone its pe- 
riodical conflagration, while New York was in the 
height of one of its triennial spasms of morality, and 
had discovered that the actor, for so many years a 
favorite, and justly so, was a licentious person, and 
quite unfit to appear before the pure and unspotted 
denizens of a metropolitan pit. Very abusive arti- 
cles about him were published in the newspapers ; 
and I do not suppose that he was a saint. He was, 
however, when he saw fit to be, a beautiful actor of 
elevated tragedy, of the true Kemble school. Na- 
ture had done everything for him. He was tall, 
finely formed, with a noble head ; his natural air 
was graceful and dignified. Once in London, before 



A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 179 

he came to America, he played Hamlet in the place 
of Elliston, who had been taken suddenly ill, and 
his performance astonished the critics. Parts like 
"William Tell and Virginius he made much greater 
than he found them ; but these were of little conse- 
quence compared with his Othello, which was a fin- 
ished and consummate piece of acting throughout. 
As a mere affair of elocution, I have never heard 
surpassed his delivery of the passage, " 0, now, for- 
ever farewell the tranquil mind ! " But it was in 
the death scene, in the castle chamber, that he was 
especially superior. His putting of the question, 
" Have you prayed to-night, Desdemona ? " full of 
mingled indignation and pity, was like the boding 
cry of a soul in despair, yet not wholly lost. All 
through this terrible and trying scene the actor never 
for a moment faltered ; his philosophical sadness in 
the beginning changing at last into that overmaster- 
ing passion which made him deaf and blind and 
pitiless, until all was done, and then he sobbed out 
like a child, " My wife ! my wife ! What wife ? I 
have no wife." This was acting which required 
no allowances. The man was master of the part. 
He had seen it performed by Kemble ; he had given 
it the most careful study ; whatever he did, he knew 
precisely why lie did it ; he played like a gentleman ; 
and he did not make you wonder that tlie Venetian 
Senate should have confided important civil duties 
to a soldier who mispronounced his words, swaggered 
as if he had all his life been one of the pioneers, and 



ISa REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

kept his liat on in-doors and in the presence of 
ladies. The business of the Bowery compelled Mr. 
Hamblin to present all manner of dramatic absurdi- 
ties, in some of which he did not hesitate to take 
part; but those who fancy that he was a mere 
Bowery actor, full of sound and fury, are much 
mistaken. 

I suppose that the old-fashioned melodrama is 
gone and gone forever. With its fustian and blue 
fire ; with its scenery of rocks and mountains and 
woods and caverns and Swiss cottages; with its 
consummate villains, and village girls in short pet- 
ticoats ; with its mixture of drollery and despera- 
tion, and its pirate or highwayman dying after much 
methodical floundering, just before the curtain fell 
to the slow wail of the fiddles and the groans of bas- 
soons, — it is gone ! It required a particular kind 
of actor to play the heavy villain, of the true burnt- 
cork type, in these miscellaneous plays. Usually 
he wore a long black cloak and a slouch . hat with a 
great drooping feather. He never walked as other 
men do. His passage down* the stage Avas slow and 
studied. It was necessary that liis arms should be 
folded, and that he should pat his left arm with the 
huge buckskin gauntlet which he w^ore upon his 
right hand. Accoutred thus, with measured step, 
and heel brought alternately to heel, he stole upon 
his homicidal errand, or shuffled to the footlights to 
communicate to the pit the information that he was 
"a villain," the truth of which disclosure nobody 



A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 181 

cared to deny. He was a terrible creature, and 
made a deep impression, not merely upon the nov- 
ices, but upon old patrons of the play-house who 
had grown to like his methods. Does any New 
York reader remember a Mr. McCutcheon — a pre- 
decessor of tlie great Kirby — who was one of the 
heaviest of dramatic villains in those days ? Does 
anybody remember poor John Howard Paine's 
" Therese ; or, The Orphan of Geneva ? " Forrest 
tried the part of Carwin in it when he was a young 
man, and a most bloody and murderous wild beast 
he portrayed ; but McCutcheon, albeit short of stat- 
ure, could give the man-mountain odds. I wish I 
could reproduce in words the hiss and roar, the min- 
gled groan and howl, with which Mr. McCutcheon 
addressed the Orphan. She had not expected to 
meet him, and had naturally exclaimed when she 
found herself in his libertine grasp, " Carwin here ? " 
How she trembled, — he had her by the fair, white 
shoulder, — while he spit at her the fearful words, 
"Ay, Car- win here! Car- win ev-er-y where ! Wher- 
ever you may go, whatever hiding-place you may 
seek, there am I to thunder in your ear, Tlicr- 
ce-ec-sc ! " The lady, I am happy to say, escaped 
from the fangs of this violent monster without in- 
jury, for she danced a sailor's hornpipe fifteen min- 
utes after with elastic agility and in true nautical 
costume. 

As the long procession of player-folk passes before 
the eye of memory, from all the grave and gay per- 



182 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

sonages it is hard to select those best worthy of my 
rude portraiture. If I give place to the ladies, as a 
well-bred man should, I must first mention one who 
was the last of the great mistresses of tragedy formed 
in the school of Siddons. The art of elevated tragic 
acting, whether it was good or bad, natural or unnat- 
ural, is lost. Mrs. Duff was the finest of those who 
brought its traditions down to comparatively mod- 
ern times ; but it was my bad luck not to see her, 
and it is of Mrs. Slornan that I mean to speak. Ah ! 
those old tragedy queens, in solemn black and lofty 
head-dresses and high heels ! I wonder if they 
would beguile our parquettes, for we have no pits 
now to be cheated out of their tremors and their 
tears. If the old tragedy style was no more than 
stately declamation, at least it brought the words 
of the poet, and the dreary and desperate facts 
of the situation, to the ears and the hearts of the 
hearers. But it was something more. Mrs. Sloman, 
for instance, as Isabella, in Southerne's tragedy of 
" The Fatal Marriage," in the painful scenes of the 
fifth act, seemed almost gigantic in her agony. In 
Jane Shore and Mrs. Beverly, she was equally fine 
and large. If the reminiscent says with a sigh, 
"There is no such acting now," I hope that the 
reader, who is supposed to be gentle, will not laugh 
at him. I am foolish enough to remember pleas- 
antly the actresses who brought intelligence to their 
work ; who thought more of what they said and of 
liow they said it than of brocades and diamonds; 



A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 183 

who were homely domestic characters, and went 
home after the play to eat supper with their hus- 
bands and put the children to bed, only plain wives, 
and queens no longer; who were letter-perfect in 
their parts and did not foist bad grammar into the 
text of Shakespeare and Sheridan ; who were, in 
short, solid, honest artists, a little under the domin- 
ion of stage tradition, but still, every evening, year 
after year, loyal to their task. Theatrical people 
now smile superciliously at the Statiras and Rox- 
annas and Belvideras of the last century, saying, 
"Anybody could play such parts." Perhaps so. I 
wish that somebody would, if it be so easy. Of 
course it is harder to wriggle up and down the 
boards as a French courtesan, and to glide through 
the mazes of crim. con. in splendid raiment, and be 
half a lady, half in earnest, half well-up in the text, 
half heard, half applauded, half everytliing ; but, if 
I may be permitted to choose, the Statiras and 
Eoxannas and Belvideras for me ! 

The fame of a great actor is so soon lost that it 
seems no more than a deed of simple justice and 
gratitude to try, even in a humble way, to perpetu- 
ate it. People ask me, sometimes, if Mr. Edwin 
Booth is as great an actor as his father was. But 
comparisons are unnecessary. I went to see the 
son play Hamlet the other night, and liere and there 
observed characteristics of the older artist. I w^aited 
eagerly for the play-scene, for I remembered liow 
fine my old favorite actor was in that, while he 



184: REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

rested in the lap of Ophelia, and dominated the 
whole stage by his single presence. The stories of 
his eccentricities, his excesses, his semi-lunacies, are 
innumerable ; some of them are authentic and some 
of them are not. It only is certain that he was 
very uncertain. Managers were obliged to watch 
him closely. I have seen a thousand people wait- 
ing for his entrance as lago, while the baffled emis- 
saries of the theatre scoured the city in quest of 
him, and it was necessary to return the money after 
all. The next niiiht he would come on with bowed 
head, and the suggestion of penitence and apology 
in his carriage ; and afterward play, as if gratefully, 
with touches here and there of the old fire which 
had warmed to enthusiasm a past generation, bring- 
ing " full-handed thunders " from box and pit and 
gallery. There Avere characters which died with 
him, though they are not, we may hope, past resur- 
rection, — such parts, for instance, as those of Sir 
Giles Overreach and Pescara. Is there anybody now 
who can give the " Some undone widow sits upon 
my arm " as he did ? — who can infuse into that 
wonderful dying speech and confession — the finest 
thing which ever came from the pen of Massinger 
— the despair, agony, remorse, and rage with which 
Mr. Booth gave it ? Small critics used to say that 
it was a recollection of the elder Kean ; but how are 
we to know that Mr. Kean's reading was not 
caught from Mr. Booth, who held London against 
him for a little while, and might have maintained. 



■ A DRAMATIC EPISODE. 185 

the contest longer, with just a little more prudence 
and sanity ? Among Mr. Booth's last engagements 
in the United States were those whicli he played at 
the Boston Museum, of which Mr. Moses Kimball 
was the manager. Seated in that gentleman's snug 
office, surrounded by countless theatrical souvenirs, 
I have often listened with pleasure to his stories of 
the great tragedian. One I venture to repeat, al- 
though the reader may already liave heard it. Dur- 
ing one of his engagements, his son Edwin, I think, 
appeared early in the morning at the theatre, wdth 
the sad information that the old man was getting a 
little unsteady. Mr. Kimball advised a rural drive, 
to last all day, and to conclude at the stage-door of 
the theatre. The device answered very well; but 
after Mr. Booth had begun to dress, he complained 
of feeling hungry. Mr. Kimball sent out for sand- 
wiches, which, alas ! proved to be sandwiches of 
ham. The actor, as a rule, declined animal food, 
but of pork he had a special abhorrence. Slowly he 
split open each sandwich, and cast the offensive 
flesh upon the floor. " You forget," he said, " that 
I am to play Shylock to-night." Then he ate the 
bread and was filled. The temptation to repeat 
many anecdotes of this remarkable man is great; 
but the gossip about him lias been persistent, and 
much that is to be said of him is already of record. 
I saw him last in Providence, and, with a somewhat 
over-joyful company, sat the night through by his 
side. He was in very ill-humor, for he had missed 



186 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the boat for ]N"ew York, where he was announced to 
appear on the succeeding evening. This, and per- 
haps the fact that we youngsters bored him, made 
him first moody and finally cross. The landlord 
asked that his son might speak a speech from some 
play before him , and, after the lad had finished ex- 
posing himself, Mr. Booth gave a great grunt of con- 
temptuous disapprobation. The night wore on ; 
when we had the audacity to ask the actor to recite, 
he declined to do so, though he volunteered to sing ; 
and finally, an entire incoherency having been estab- 
lished, he was led to his chamber, and the rest of us 
took our departure. He w'as then much changed; 
his voice was in ruins ; but his head w^as still noble, 
and his walk upon the stage dignified. How far he 
was morally responsible for what he did it is impos- 
sible to say, but undoubtedly he was not so alto- 
gether. Mr. Choate, the great Boston lawyer, used 
to say that he had seen Mr. Booth play this and 
that character over and over again, but that he had 
never seen him play the same part twice precisely 
in the same way. This criticism is perhaps the 
highest compliment which could be paid to his 
genius. If his rendering was in some particulars 
the chance of the occasion, it showed how entirely 
he abandoned himself to his work, and how thor- 
oughly he entered into the spirit of the part which 
he was presenting. 



THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM, 187 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 

Ellen Tree. — Chakles Kean. — A Memory of Talfourd's 
"Ion." — Edwin Forrest. — Anecdotes of that Tra- 
gedian. — Public Manias. — Fanny Elssler. — Ole Bull. 
— Jenny Lind. 

THE temptation to renew the gossip of the pre- 
ceding chapter is too strong to be resisted. 
My hand moves involuntarily to ring up again the 
curtain. Like the boy who flits from the door of 
this dressing-room to that of another, I call to the 
occupants that they wiU shortly be wanted, or that 
the stage waits. These are but ghosts wdio come 
out at the summons, in toga or tunic, in the light 
muslin of the dancers, in the saucy cap of the cham- 
bermaid, in the trailing skirts of the queen of tra- 
gedy, in tlie short clothes and long waistcoats and 
tie-wigs of the eighteenth century. The Thane's 
wife once more wrings her little hands, which have 
royal blood upon them ; the honeymoon of poor 
Juliet sets behind the grim walls of the sepulchre ; 
Desdemona disrobes for the fatal bed from which 
slie will never rise again ; or, as the kindly sunlight 
irradiates the scene, the fine women of Congreve or 
Wycherly send a thrill of laughter through all the 



188 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

house, or my Lady Teazle fascinates and repels her 
lord in one sweet breath. Is there anybody who 
ever heard it, who can forget how Ellen Tree, look- 
ing saucily into the face of Benedick, drawled mock- 
ingly out, " I wonder that you will still be talking, 
Signor Benedick; nobody marks you." Here Avas 
assurance of a delightful evening, and we gathered 
ourselves together to make the most of it. Surely, 
Shakespeare came almost mended from these lips. 
With w^iat wonderful force and energy, after all 
that light trifling, did the lady utter the words, as 
if they had been wa^enched out of her, " Oh that I 
were a man ! God, that I were a man ! I would 
eat his heart in the market-place ! " All the pert 
badinage gone ; all the impulses of girlhood changed 
to a deadly earnest; wit and humor and merry 
repartee forgotten ; the temper which was wont to 
expend itself in pretty frivolity grown almost tragic, 
as the niece of Leonato sneered out, " But manhood 
is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, 
and men are only turned into tongues, and trim 
ones, too." The reader who has seen Shakespeare 
well acted reads him with a double zest. What was 
ideal has become to him an embodiment. It is as 
if he had known these heroes and heroines, — had 
sighed with Jacques, had laughed with Mercutio, or 
been personally amused by the blundering of Dog- 
berry. Miss Tree — I like to call her by that name 
— w^as equally fine in tragedy, and theatre-goers 
have not forgotten her Mrs. Beverly, played with her 



THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 189 

husband, Mr. Charles Kean, who might have been a 
great tragic actor if Nature had done just a little 
more for him, and he had been a little more fortu- 
nate in his elocution. I remember how he came 
before the curtain to return thanks upon his benefit 
night, and in the course of his speech gasped out 
Goldsmith's couplet : " Where'er I go, ah ! — what- 
ever realms, ah ! — I see, ah ! — the heart, ah ! — un- 
travelled still, ah I — returns to thee, ah ! " It 
might have been all very pathetic, if some under- 
bred person in the pit had not cried out, " Heavens ! 
what a mouth to eat pumpkins with ! " This, I am 
compelled to admit, rather detracted from the pathos 
of the occasion. But let us return to the lady. I 
believe that Mr. Justice Talfourd's " Ion," which 
was a great success in 1835, is now seldom played. 
In London Miss Tree was the Calanthe, for the part 
of Ion was often played by Mr. Macready. I have 
often wondered what he made of it. In America 
the lady played Ion, and played it beautifully. To 
say that she carried a tragedy, perhaps the heaviest 
which has had any success in English-speaking 
theatres since Dr. Johnson's " Irene," is to affirm 
simple truth. Her perfect acting animated the cold 
Greek forms by which she was hampered, and she 
infused into the part of the doomed boy almost a 
romantic warmth. As Ion glided on through many 
a dark maze toward the grim end which awaited 
him, his cheerful carriage, his captivating resigna- 
tion, his touching submission, were all beautifully 



190 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

delineated by this meritorious actress; and when 
the thunder pronounced the doom which awaited 
him, the resignation with which the decree of the 
gods was met filled all our hearts with pity and sad- 
ness. We caught something of the old iEschylian 
inspiration ; and, as we left the theatre, we almost 
saw painted upon the midnight sky the frowning 
outline of the Acropolis. 

The transition from this delicate triumph of the 
dramatic art to the gladiatorial exhibitions of Mr. 
Edwin Forrest is like passing from the musical mea- 
dows of Arcadia to the fields of Bashan, resonant 
with bovine bellowers. As an American, I am un- 
der constitutional obligations to declare Mr. Forrest 
the finest tragic actor of this or of any age ; but as a 
man and a critic, I resolutely refuse to say anything 
of the sort. " If this be treason," as Patrick Henry 
said, " make the most of it ! " Fanny Kemble, some- 
where about 1832, during her first theatrical tri- 
umphs in the United States, went down to the Bow- 
ery Theatre to see the young tragedian about whom 
there was so much talk ; and I think her sole criti- 
cism upon him in her diary is, " What a mountain 
of a man ! " Well, he was tall and he was muscu- 
lar. Such calves as his I have seldom seen. It was 
with admirable instinct that Dr. Bird wrote for this 
large person the play of " The Gladiator." He was 
born for single combat. The Macduff with whom 
he contended had a hard time of it, nor did he easily 
succumb to the most valiant Eichmond. Supernu- 



THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 191 

meraries did not like to be handled by him when 
the business required pulling about and. mauling. 
The Messenger in "Damon and Pythias" always 
played the part at the risk of his bones when Mr. 
Forrest delineated the patriotic Syracusian. Of 
course, all this mastodonian muscularity was a dis- 
advantage in characters of predominating intellect, 
like Hamlet, with which our actor never meddled 
without reminding us of a bull in a china-shop. 
The merits of Mr. Forrest w^ere those which might 
be acquired by long experience of the stage, and by 
many opportunities of practising at the expense of 
the public. Sometimes, when he had only to man- 
age a few lengths of stately declamation, he suc- 
ceeded in making an impression upon the judicious. 
With such a frame, and a good costume, it would 
have been strange if he had altogether missed dig- 
nity ; but he was not overburthened with intellec- 
tual perceptions, and, generally speaking, whatever 
he played he was the same man. One remembers 
him, not as Macbeth, nor even as Spartacus or Meta- 
mora, but as the Great American Tragedian. Actors 
are not usually good judges of dramas ; but it would 
be impossible for a player of the least literary in- 
stinct to go on acting year after year in such a far- 
rago of bombast and bad rlietoric as poor John 
Augustus Stone's aboriginal drama of " Metamora." 
Mr. Stone did what he could to atone for the injury 
which he had inflicted upon the world by the pro- 
duction of this play and another, equally bad, which 



192 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

he wrote for Yankee Hill. He drowned himself on 
June 1, 1834, in the Schuylkill Eiver. We will ac- 
cept the presumptive apology. Mr. Forrest went on 
playing those parts specially written for his private 
legs and larynx to the end. One does not under- 
stand why he did not lay them aside after the full 
development of his Shakespearean aspirations. I 
think that he had dim notions of the faults of his 
acting, and that he tried a little to be less outrage- 
ous ; but he was rather worse when he attempted to 
be quiet than when he o'er- did Termagant or out- 
Heroded Herod. Any effort to utter anything sotto 
wee instantly suggested suffocation. ISTor could Mr. 
Forrest move his ponderous limbs with ease, except 
in garments of the loosest description ; in a part like 
that of Claude Melnotte, demanding modern ap- 
parel, he was like the Farnese Hercules in a dress- 
coat. He had some original business, but it was not 
good ; even if it had been better, he w^ould have 
spoiled it by over-consciousness and by thrusting it 
upon the attention of the house. He thought too 
much of making a sensation to be natural. I never 
saw a Eichard III. so long in getting ready to go to 
bed ; I never saw one, after the appearance of the 
ghosts, get up with such astonishing alacrity, or 
down to the footlights with more convulsive speed. 
It is a mean thing to deny merit, when merit is due ; 
and Mr. Forrest was certainly very bustling and 
tremulous in the tent-scene. I have heard it said 
that at one time he played it with a weapon to the 



THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 193 

hilt of wbich bits of metal were attached, the rattle 
of these sufiicieutly attesting the agitation of the 
guilty monarch. Going into some cheap theatre one 
niglit, he found that a rival Eichard had pirated his 
invention, and tliis sent him home in great ill-humor. 
He would not be soothed, nor, for some time, ex- 
plain his sulkiness ; but when he suddenly broke 

out with *' D 'em ! they all have shaking swords," 

the household understood why its lord was ill at 
ease. He seemed to carry his admiration of mere 
bicjness even into his ideas of a sister art. There is 
a funny story of the advice which he gave to a young 
painter who had sought his patronage ; an eminent 
writer in Boston used to tell it thus with great 
gusto : " I knew your father, sir ! A good artist, sir 1 
You should give yourself to high art, sir. Have you 
ever seen Paul Potter's bull ? That is what I call hicjh 
art, sir ! " Old Andrew Jackson Allen, an eccentric 
costumer, well known in the theatrical circles of 
New York, was a factotum of Forrest. His evidence 
in the scandalous divorce case was amusing, and will 
be remembered by those who perused the reports of 
those unsavory proceedings. Allen made for For- 
rest's Eichard III. a magnificent, well-burnished suit 
of patent leather. Forrest was always in the habit 
of chaffing Allen, and on one occasion he had been 
particularly sarcastic in his allusions to patent leath- 
er. " Patent leather, indeed," responded Allen test- 
ily. " I should like to know what your Eichard III. 
would be without it ! " And with this clever repar- 
13 



194 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

tee we may dismiss this uncommonly large actor. 
As an orator he is not so well known. He delivered 
a wonderful Fourth of July oration, somewhere 
between 1830 and 1840, in this city, which was 
printed, and glad collectors of curiosa always are to 
obtain a copy. It is before me ; it is extremely 
beautiful, — one of the finest pieces of calico compo- 
sition ever sent to the press. 

I wish that somebody, with leisure and taste for 
the work, would write a history of the American 
manias in the matter of amusement, from the far- 
away days of George Frederick Cooke and Edmund 
Kean, down to the present time. In 1841 we all 
went mad about a dancer, Fanny Elssler, and long 
queues from the middle of the street to the box- 
office, and great prices paid for tickets, attested the 
sudden passion of Americans for the delicacies of 
the Terpsichorean art. We had enjoyed good ballet- 
dancing before, — the evergreen Celeste in "The 
French Spy," Augusta in '' La Bayadere," to say 
nothing of Master and Miss Wells, hopping about 
between the acts, and making a dancing-school of 
the stage of the Old Park Theatre. Mademoiselle 
was charming, I suppose, but it all looks rather 
faded and shabby to me now, through the mists of 
all these years ; only I remember that people were 
crazy then about her grace and her smile and her 
lovely pantomime, her jumps and skips and hops 
and pirouettes. She had a Mons. Sylvain with her, 
wonderful also for agility, and these two in a ^as de 



THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 195 

deux were considered inimitable. I was not much 
of a judge of these gymnastics, but I thought the 
lady the perfection of grace until Mr. N. P. Willis, 
then our arhiter elegantiarum, solemnly declared 
that she danced like a pair of tongs. After that, of 
course, I was in doubt, although a friend of mine 
often avowed, with every appearance of sincerity, 
that he would give twenty dollars at any time to see 
mademoiselle, in her short petticoats, take her seat 
when the business of the ballet required the seden- 
tary position. All I know is that people went crazy, 
as they will any time if their enthusiasm be prop- 
erly manipulated. Once convince them that they 
cannot get into the theatre without paying an un- 
conscionable sum of money, and they will be sure of 
the aesthetic excellence of what is to be seen or 
heard within. I ought to say that mademoiselle 
gave a real ballet of action, with a story in it, — a 
kind of entertainment which seems to be lost. It 
was not in the least of the " Black Crook " school ; 
it had a plot with a beginning and end, which, 
although undeniably absurd, afforded a reason for 
the saltatory exhibition, for all the work done with 
legs and arms by the first female and the first male 
dancer, and by the many twinkling choruses which 
twirled and twined and went about in circles and 
platoons and atoned for the general ugliness of every- 
body in it by a conscientious attention to business. 
As for the morality of the matter — who knows ? 
Did n't mademoiselle dance in Puritan Boston for 



196 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the benefit of the Bunker Hill Monument/ — that 
shaft which was so long in the process of construc- 
tion ? They told a wicked story, with not a word of 
truth in it, I suppose ; but people will have their 
jest. Those were the days of "New England Tran- 
scendentalism," whatever that may have been ; and 
they said that among those who, upon one occasion, 
gazed at the dancer from the boxes were Mr. Emer- 
son and poor Miss Margaret Fuller. As the tale 
was told, upon some movement of unusual and par- 
ticular grace, the philosopher turned to the lady and 
said, " Margaret, this is poetry " ; and she respond- 
ed, " Ealph, this is religion ! " I fear that I am 
making a little free with venerable and well-honored 
names ; and I only give the anecdote to show how 
much chat, wise or foolish, but mainly foolish, the 
charming and clever lady from Vienna occasioned. 

Soon after we had another sensation. Up to 1843 
we had enjoyed but little virtuoso playing upon the 
violin, the violoncello, or the double-bass. The scope 
of these instruments was, in fact, almost unknown 
here. Then Ole Bull, who had a kind of European 
reputation for doing impossible things with catgut 
and horsehair, burst upon us, and, I am afraid, took 
advantage of our uneducated condition. Ear be it 
from me to undertake any criticism of his perform- 
ances ; but, as a historian, I may set down the fact 
that we all made asses of ourselves ; that we thought 
nonsense, talked nonsense, and printed nonsense 
about this Norwegian. Dear Mrs. Lydia Maria 



THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 197 

Child, the kindest and cleverest of women, was 
among those who were most egregiously taken in. 
Of course, she knew nothing whatever of violin- 
playing, A smart musical boy, with a knack at 
the how, might have cheated her ; but when told 
that the piece was called " The Mother's Prayer," 
she became instantly devout, heard aspirations in 
every trill, trust in God in each vibration of the G 
string, all the experiences of human life in shake 
OY fizzicato, and the sweet innocence of childhood 
laughing now on the E and now on the A. She 
was the New York correspondent of " The Boston 
Courier," and she actually wrote to that journal — 
then edited by old, hard-headed Joseph T. Bucking- 
ham — that in giving this piece, Mr. Ole Bull's 
hands seemed often clasped as if in prayer. If he 
had been an archangel, fresh from the throne, there 
could not have been more reverent rhapsody uttered 
about his musical abilities. I do not think that he 
meant to help the delusion; he probably believed 
that he was all that his crowded and shouting 
audiences thought him to be. They said that when 
asked who was his teacher, he replied, " God ! " My 
friend, Mr. William Keyser, then the leader of the 
Boston Academy of Music, and a solid player of 
the old De Beriot school, always went into a passion 
whenever he heard this story. " Bah ! " he would 
say, " I don't like his teacher. Give me Vieuxtemps, 
— the French Conservatory taught him ! " "What 
gave point to this was that M. Vieuxtemps was in 



198 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

this country at the same time, and though one of 
the most admirable players of the period, was quite 
overshadowed by the grand success of his rival. 
Only a little while ago the news came to us that 
the old virtuoso had died, far away from the scene 
of his transatlantic triumphs. But he had been 
lingering here only a little while before, playing 
sometimes, and still believed in, now and then, by 
popular audiences : but the glory was gone ; the 
enthusiasm had utterly disappeared ; all the facile 
tricks of execution w^ere better understood; and 
people of this generation only wondered at the 
frenzy of their predecessors. 

I have scant space left in which to speak of the 
Jenny Lind lunacy which came in 1851. Was it so 
long as thirty years ago that we gave ourselves up, 
under the spell of Mr. Barnum's management, body, 
soul, and pocket-book, to that delusion ? Since the 
public disbursed its money by tens of thousands of 
dollars, j ust to hear her sing two or three songs ? 
Eluu fugaces ! Where is the man who paid such a 
fortune for the first choice of a seat ? Where are 
the dozen dollars which I myself took from a flaccid 
purse, and cheerfully laid down for the privilege of 
seeing the extraordinary woman, when I might just 
as well have stayed at home, and listened to a dear 
voice singing something which I could understand, 
to the honest accompaniment of the old, wxll-worn 
pianoforte ? We are not always wise. I was so 
anxious to hear the lady that I heard her to no 



THE STAGE AND CONCERT-ROOM. 199 

purpose. She came in, a form of life and light, and 
we gave ourselves to handclapping and huzzas. She 
sang a very little, and, as she glided from the scene, 
again we surrendered ourselves to handclapping 
and huzzas. It was thrilling, but I remember no 
more. I only wish that I had my dozen dollars 
safe again in my purse, that I might spend them in 
buying old books, or in securing tickets for the next 
Philiiarmonic series. 



200 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTEE XV. 

A GOSSIP OF POLITICS. 

The Men of the CArcusES. — The Death of Daniel Webstek. 
— Characteristics of that Orator and Statesman. — 
Theodore Parker. — His Humanity and Natural Re- 
ligion. — The Hard Fate of a Newspaper and its Editor. 
The Fremont Campaign. — An Active Member of the 
Party. 

SHALL we go back to politics and politicians, 
to statesmen and state matters, to questions 
wbicli once mortally agitated ns, but wbicb now 
trouble nobody's peace ? Tbe trifles of tbe theatre 
have eno-ased us. We will return, if the reader 
pleases, to those caucuses and conventions about 
which, of course, there is no illusion whatever. In 
this excellent republic, the important people are 
those who hold, have held, or hope to hold office, 
high or not so high. Some of these live in memory 
only. Some of them, not unconsidered during their 
own fleeting moment, are utterly forgotten. After the 
fitful fever of the fray, victorious majorities or dole- 
ful defeats, this miscarriage or that success, may 
they rest in peace ! Heaven grant that they dilate 
no more with absurd ambitions, with those fatal 
yearnings for any place or presidency, wdnch are 
the quintessence of hope deferred ! May there be 



A GOSSIP OF POLITICS 201 

for them no mortifying failures at the polls of the 
land to which they have gone, if haply that land 
enjoys the charms and thrills and emotions of uni- 
versal suffrage ! Only if for some souls there could 
be no heaven worth having without a political can- 
vass, let us make a reservation in favor of tastes so 
thoroughly confirmed. If theirs can be no pleasure 
save that of nomination and election, may such 
pleasure be still granted them ; or, if it be better 
to have run and lost than never to have run at 
all, may the persistently unlucky candidate there 
find some mysterious satisfaction in a swinging 
minority ! 

Mr. AVebster died in October, 1852. Perhaps it 
is one more proof of the fascination which he exer- 
cised over the minds of men that I recur to him. 
Even now, how much he is mentioned, how earnestly 
his character is discussed ! As he lay dying at his 
well-loved house in Marshfield, in that cool New 
England October, which invigorated so many frames, 
though it brought no new life to the shattered giant, 
we were marching about and raising banners, shout- 
ing ourselves hoarse, firing guns, and doing what 
we could to galvanize the ill-starred nomination of 
General Scott. There was a time when the Defender 
of the Constitution might have sent a withering 
sneer from his dying pillow at our desperate antics; 
but the self-sufficiency, the arrogance, and the dicta- 
tion which had in it a flavor of despotiism, were all 
gone then. There was nothing for the great man to 



202 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

do but to die. People said that the nomination of 
General Scott killed him ; they forgot his seventy 
years, his liberal method of life, and the energy 
which he had put not only into his work but his 
amusements. That the nomination made by the 
Baltimore Convention grievously disappointed him 
is certain. A friend who happened to be in his 
house when the news of General Scott's candidacy 
reached there, told me that Mrs. AVebster spoke 
pathetically but with perfect frankness of the pain 
which the decision of the convention would give to 
Mr. Webster. And, after all, it was as well that he 
should die soon : there was no presidency for liim ; 
through all his life he had never had a chance of it. 
Indeed, there was now no remaining public career for 
him. It was a grief to hear some men speak lightly 
of him even in Boston ; and after he was dead they 
told odd stories, of which that sick-chamber was the 
scene. They said that he had taken a formal fare- 
well of his blooded stock ; that his whole herd had 
been driven slowly by the door at which he was 
seated, to receive his dying benediction ; and that, 
solemnly waving his hand, as he distinguished one 
favorite animal, he had exclaimed, in weak, pathetic, 
but still semi-sonorous tones, " Molly Mottle, fare- 
well ! " There were other stories, whether ill or well 
founded, of actual pecuniary exigency at the Marsh- 
field farmhouse, — stories which reminded one of 
' the dying days of Sheridan, though, of course, there 
was nothing like .the absolute pinch which put the 



A GOSSIP OF POLITICS. 203 

*'last blanket" of the wit in danger of legal at- 
tachment. It is true, however, that the man who 
had received such enormous sums of money for pro- 
fessional and otlier services left no money behind 
him. He would have had his revenge, if he could 
have lived just a little longer, to read the election 
returns, and to find General Scott receiving the 
votes of only four States. Mr. Webster himself 
could hardly have done so badly as that. We are 
often called upon to listen to a fresh discussion of this 
great man's character. Only a few voices of dissent 
were raised in 1852, when a perfect psean of unre- 
strained, funereal eulogy swelled through the land. 
He had all his life been accustomed to the most ab- 
ject ^flattery. The healthy doubts here and there 
uttered might have given some grim satisfaction to 
his ghost after it had discovered the emptiness of 
worldly honors. There were men in plenty to de- 
liver mortuary orations, but I am compelled to say 
that I do not think that his death occasioned any deep 
general regret in Massachusetts. It had long before 
been discovered that the godlike had many human 
infirmities. Then it is always foolish to praise men 
for what they were not. Mr. Everett says, in the 
article which he wrote for an encyclopsedia on Mr. 
Webster, "He was a remarkably good shot." Of 
course, Mr. Everett would not have said this if he 
had not been told so, and believed what he was 
told ; but the fact is that Mr. Webster was a remark- 
ably-bad shot, and was often tlirown into a passion- 



204 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

by his own want of skill. He w^as reputed a mighty 
hunter of deer ; but I think the truth to be that he 
seldom killed one of the antlered herd. Once, about 
1842, there was a paragraph meandering through 
the newspapers about a noble buck which he was 
said to have brought down, and which was shown in 
New York with a ball in the centre of the forehead, 
— " indubitable proof," said the journalists, " of the 

unerring aim of the great man." Judge W , 

who knew Mr. Webster very well, and did not much 
love him, came into my office and asked me if I 
had seen the paragraph. " Because," said the judge, 
in his softly satirical way, " it is a pity that a wrong 
statement should be made of anything. I know all 
about that buck. It was sent as a gift by Mr. 
Webster to Mr. Stetson, of the Astor House, and 
w^as killed by somebody else — certainly not by 
Mr. Webster. Perhaps you had better correct the 
story in your newspaper." I forget whether I did 
or not ; but probably I did not. Then, again, there 
is an impression that Mr. Webster was an excellent 
farmer; indeed, Mr. Everett says as much in the 
article above alluded to. I believe that he was 
A^ery unsuccessful in his agricultural operations, and 
that both the Massachusetts and the New Hamp- 
shire farm ran him deeply in debt, though it is 
not probable that he would have given up his rural 
amusement if he had never raised a single crop. 
There are a hundred stories of his chronic impecu- 
niosity, but I do not propose to repeat them. They 



A GOSSIP OF POLITICS. 205 

are too mortifying to be put upon record. He was 
not the first great man whose credit was not good 
with tradesmen ; nor was he the first whose perfect 
promptness in paying his bills has been vouched for 
by eulogists and blind admirers. 

There is nothing more remarkable than the deep 
and abiding impression which Mr. Webster's char- 
acter, as it was popularly understood, made upon 
clergymen. One of the most excellent of that pro- 
fession in New England, after this chapter was pub- 
lislied in the newspaper, thus wrote to me : " May 
I call your attention to Daniel Webster? What 
you say of him is substantially true. And yet he 
was so great a man, he was made up on so magni- 
ficent a scale that, with all these imperfections, there 
were predominant in his composition qualities of 
the truest and highest character, enough, and large 
enough to give an enduring reputation for magna- 
nimity and moral greatness to any one of his dis- 
tinguished contemporaries. There was in him a 
boundless wealth of affection and emotion; a 
grandeur in his moral ideas and religious concep- 
tions that raised him above all the public men that 
I have ever known." Anxious to be just, I add 
this amiable protest, feeling only regret that, with a 
larger knowledge than my friend can possibly pos- 
sess, I cannot share the opinion which it embodies. 
I believe that Mr. Webster was deeply desirous of 
being publicly useful. I believe, indeed, that he 
was what Burke calls "a public creature," and that 



206 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

only ill the great affairs of state could such a nature 
find adequate employment. Thinking thus of this 
great man, fully appreciating his intellectual force, 
charmed as I always am by reading the best of his 
speeches, — for he made many which were unwor- 
thy of his abilities, — not unmindful of his almost 
faultless use of the English language, — I am con- 
strained to say that if he in the least appreciated 
the political situation during his later years, the 
proof is not to be found in anything which he said 
or did. He seems during that time to have thought 
more of the methods of the politician than of the 
higher morals of the statesman. I am afraid that 
he came to regard government too much as a matter 
of machineryo He believed that the great throb- 
bings of a nation's heart could be stilled by Act of 
Congress. It was a sad mistake; and I wish that 
he had not made it. 

Among those who most severely criticised the 
course of Mr. Webster, both before and after his 
death, was Theodore Parker. This celebrated thinker 
and teacher had all the virtues of Christianity, 
though he did not accept its divine origin in the 
usual sense. His congregation in those days, in the 
Boston Music Hall, was a sight to see ; for, ample as 
were the proportions of the edifice, they were hardly 
enough so for the crowds which thronged to hear 
Mr. Parker preach antislavery, charity, temperance, 
and all the major and minor virtues. Of course 
some people went to hear conventional religion 



A GOSSIP OF POLITICS. 207 

spoken of sharply, and to enjoy Mr. Parker's free 
method of handling the Bible and the creeds ; others 
were there out of curiosity ; but, whether you were 
at one with the speaker or not, so far as more than 
a moiety of the assemblage was concerned, you felt 
that you were breathing an atmosphere of sincerity 
and, I may say, of particular conscientiousness. Mr. 
Parker was not an orator. He was no j)nlpit culti- 
vator of the graces. He had not been petted and 
dandled into popularity. His rule had always been 
to speak the things which were true, rather than 
the things which were agreeable. His sermons were 
prepared upon no venerable model, and no more re- 
minded you of Blair than of Jonathan Edwards ; 
but they were so replete with thought and courage, 
so strengthened by unusual learning, so massive in 
their simplicity, so direct in their point, and so 
recommended by " exceeding honesty," that, how- 
ever much one might disagree with the teacher, it 
was impossible not to respect him. He had not a 
single dramatic accessory. He had no pulpit, and 
not even a church. His manner was quiet, he 
used few gestures : the voice and the noble Socratic 
face supplied more than the whole armory of the 
deftest elocutionist. He preached about everything, 
and that is why he is mentioned just here ; for, of 
course, he preached about politics. He plainly and 
plumply advised his people to disobey the Fugitive 
Slave Law, not theoretically, but practically. He 
was very little of a non-resista;it; and I doubt if 



208 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

even his friend Garrison, that good man of perfect 
peace, except peace of the tongue, could have held 
him back from shooting, when there was a reason- 
able prospect that shooting would be ef&cient. As 
for the poor hunted runaway's right to resort to 
knives and pistols to keep his new and hardly- won 
liberty, why, I suspect that not even Mr. Garrison 
had much doubt about that. SomehoAV, the pacific 
theories did not seem so important when it came to 
the question of personal liberty or the death of the 
kidnapper. Whatever his errors, I have reason to 
remember Mr. Parker only with gratitude. I had 
not long been an editor in Boston, before I discov- 
ered that, for various reasons, I had entered upon a 
rather difficult business. It was not easy to speak 
words of truth and of humanity in opposition to 
what were then regarded as the material interests of 
the city. Commerce and capital and manufactures 
were upon the other side, and even those who 
meant to do right were occasionally timid. So, one 
day, when Mr. Parker, with whom I had then no 
personal acquaintance whatever, walked into my 
little room, and, having introduced himself with a 
free, natural courtesy, uttered words of approbation 
and encouragement, I felt that his single approval 
was worth all the plaudits of all the lawyers' offices 
and warehouses and counting-rooms put together. 
When I thanked him, I meant what I said ; for I 
had many advisers, who were but Job's comforters 
at best. While they were hanging John Brown in 



A GOSSIP OF POLITICS. 209 

Virginia, Mr. Parker with his dying hand was 
writing from Italy, " There is a glorious future for 
America, — but the other side of the Red Sea." He, 
too, was of the prophets. 

The Eepublican party in Massachusetts began in 
a small sort of way. In 1855 was nominated that 
respectable man, Julius Eockwell, for governor, and 
he received a little over thirty-six thousand votes. 
It was rather a doleful lookout for my poor old 
newspaper, " The Boston Atlas," which had taken its 
life in its hand and gone into the contest for free- 
dom and for the delivery of the State from the 
thraldom of the absurd and unwholesome American 
party. That party had done as it pleased, and had 
done very badly. The year before it had possessed 
the entire legislature, and had afforded a valuable 
example of the danger of unlimited political power. 
"VVe had to bear, while this transition was going on, 
the jeers and scoffs of our prosperous contemporaries, 
who still found profit in clinging to the name of 
Whig, and who scolded us most uncivilly because 
we would say that the Whig party was dead. It 
was amusing to observe how sure they were that it 
w^as still living, and would probably elect the next 
President. The " iVtlas " was a traitor, and deserved 
only the treatment of a traitor. I am mortified to 
admit that those Boston journalists who now figure 
as orthodox Kepublicans got altogether the best of 
us. For years ours had been the leading Whig 
newspaper of New England. The property had 

14 



210 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

been regarded as valuable ; it had always paid good 
dividends. Gradually, and simply because we in- 
sisted that the Whig party had filled the measure 
of its usefulness ; because we averred that it could 
be of no benefit to the country to struggle against 
hope to maintain it ; because we persistently pro- 
claimed that new occasions had brought new duties ; 
in short, because we were not deaf and blind, and 
stupider than stupid, we lost our advertising, we 
lost our circulation, we lost the prestige which we 
had so long enjoyed. Soon after I left it, the stock- 
holders of the "Atlas " were glad to sell out, and to be 
absorbed in Mr. Samuel Bowles's grand scheme for 
establishing a great metropolitan journal in Boston, 
■ — that enterprise which, starting with such prodi- 
gious 4dai, speedily came to grief of all kinds, and 
ended w^ith the return of Mr. Bowles to his old 
sphere in Springfield, no more to try experiments in 
rejoining the disjecta membra of half-defunct news- 
papers, or in making for the cit}^ of Boston a better 
one than it really wanted. I have seen all that I 
hoped for accomplished, and may even turn with 
pardonable complacency to the fulfilment of proph- 
ecies which I made years ago, in common with some 
other men, and made only to be laughed at and 
sneered at. Upon the "Boston Atlas" I had my 
last experience in managing a newspaper, and I 
never desire another. One may be a pretty good 
writer and yet a bad manager ; and the pangs of 
responsibility, in my opinion, are much greater than 



A GOSSIP OF POL/TICS. 211 

its pleasures. It is one thing to risk your own 
money or reputation ; it is quite another to put the 
capital stock of other people in jeopardy. They will 
be sure to come and advise you. Heavens ! how they 
used to come and advise me, and fill my inmost 
soul with pins and needles ! Sometimes I wrote 
too much about slavery, and was risking the patron- 
age of the great house oa Long Wharf, which had 
delicate commercial relations with New Orleans or 
Savannah ; sometimes I did not write enough 
about slavery, and seemed really to be helping the 
doughfaces ; sometimes the Eev. Mr. Canonicus, 
D. D., had expressed a decided disapprobation of 
one of my articles ; sometimes an ineffably great 
lawyer in Court Street had done me the honor to 
disagree with me. One could not turn without 
treading on the corns of somebody. Did I not 
think that I had gone a little too far in my article 
on Wednesday ? And could n't I take it all back, 
without seeming to take it back, on Friday ? How 
about putting it in this way ? How about put- 
ting it in that way ? We must be wise, we 
must be prudent, we must be cautious ; we must 
not frighten the dear public, though I could not 
see why not, as the dear public was so frightening 
us. We w^ere beaten in the Fremont campaign, 
through bad management on our part, and good 
financial management on the part of the Democrats, 
particularly in Pennsylvania; and my editorial 
career in Boston came speedily to a close. If I 



212 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

have dwelt too long upon the failure, it is because I 
am rather proud of it. Several of the good men 
who gave me such profound advice have gone where 
advice is not needed ; and I have since got along 
tolerably well with much less of that commodity. 

It w^as my fortune in those days to find myself 
oftenest in a lean and beggarly minority. I was al- 
ways ready to rush impetuously forward, and to im- 
plore those who were in a position to do so to take 
the initiative, whatever might be the cost. I think 
that there was vouchsafed to me even then some 
prescience of the events which were not far distant. 
I did not see how the great conflict could be averted ; 
but I differed from many who were associated with 
me, in not desiring that it should be. One grew 
naturally tired of trusting to the loyalty and good 
faith of the slaveholders ; and I thought that Prov- 
idence had opened a w^ay, through the fatuity of 
the advocates of slavery, for ridding the republic 
of that " body of death." Yet those who professed 
to hate compromise were still timid, or had personal 
and pecuniary reasons for caution. After victory came, 
they were not averse to sharing in its substantial 
results ; but I never found them particularly mindful 
of those who w^orked humbly in the beginning, and 
w^ere too obscure to be rewarded. 

Why doesn't somebody, with experience and 
cleverness enough for the task, give us a history 
of presidential elections, — of their manoeuvres, as- 
pects, methods, peculiarities ? With such topics he 



A GOSSIP OF POL/ TICS. 213 

might be grave, gay, satirical, philosophical, if he 
had but brains enough to grapple with the subject. 
Take, for instance, one feature of such contests, — 
• their tendency to make business for men who have 
no business of their own, for those camp-followers 
of each political party who, during a few months in 
the fall and early winter, insist upon being gener- 
ally useful, and are here, there, and everywhere, 
raising money, a part of which at least is never 
heard of again ; suggesting, advising, going on long 
journeys at the shortest notice, and coming back 
again in the most undesirable way. Eecruits of this 
highly useful class were particularly numerous dur- 
ing the Fremont campaign. The status of the party 
w^as not exactly settled ; it was not precisely deter- 
mined who should be the great men and who the 
little ones in the new organization, and this resulted 
in something like anarchy. I knew a helpful 
gentleman of the kind above alluded to who was 
dreadfully grieved, as he had reason to be, when we 
were routed. He would come to my office to see 
what I meant to print next morning, and sometimes 
he approved and sometimes disapproved; then he 
would hire a buggy and drive out to Waltham to 
see General. Banks; then he would invite half a 
dozen men to dinner, — and a very good dinner, I am 
bound to say, with much grave discussion of the 
situation after the cloth was off, though I never 
could see that all our talk had any perceptible effect 
upon the aspects and chances of the battle ; then 
our friend would rush to New York to " shut up " 



214 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

somebody who had said, done, or printed something 
which he should have left unsaid, undone, or in 
manuscript. Occasionally he would be thrown into 
despair by some imprudence on the part of "Jessie," 
for it was by this affectionate name that he usually 
spoke of Mrs. Fremont. Of course he would hurry 
away upon another journey to set that matter right. 
He knew everything and everybody. He had found 
out to a dollar how much money it would take to 
secure the cooperation of this or that great news- 
paper ; and generally his advice was that it should 
be raised at once. When an emissary came from 
Pennsylvania to beg in Boston for the sinews of war, 
and tell us of the lavish expenditure of the Demo- 
crats, Mr. was horror- stricken at the destitution 

of the Fremontaneers of that State, and went from 
counting-room to counting-room with the financial 
ambassador, asking for subscriptions to relieve their 
sinewless condition. When the fatal hour arrived, 
and all our delicious dreams faded to the dull 
reality of defeat, he knew all about the causes of 
the catastrophe. To these I listened with unflinch- 
ing politeness and little interest. I knew that the 
victory of truth and humanity and common-sense 
would come in time ; and if the country could wait, 
it was not for a humble journalist to be in a hurry. 
In justice to the gentleman of whom I have spoken, 
I may say that he was generous, genial, and of per- 
fect veracity ; and this is more than I should be able 
with truth to say of all the "active" politicians 
whom I have encountered. 



HORACE GREELEY. 215 



CHAPTER XVI. 

HORACE GREELEY. 

Coming to New York. — Misrepresentations of Mr. Greeley. 

— His Personal Opinions apart from Politics. — His 
Love of Right and Truth. — People who annoyed him. 

— His Journalistic Characteristics. — His Plain Speech 
AND Wit and Humor. — The Presidential Canvass. — Mr. 
Greeley's Death. 

Q1 far as my career as a journalist in that town 
k3 was concerned, matters in Boston, after the 
Fremont campaign, soon came to an end. It was 
expected that I could write a newspaper out of 
predestinate insolvency, — a feat which never has 
been performed by any editor, however clever, and 
never will be. The experiment has been tried a 
hundred times, and it has always failed. Men with 
more money than knowledge buy a newspaper be- 
cause they want political influence, or are possessed 
by a hunger for office. Having secured the property, 
they look about for an editor. Having secured the 
editor, they edit him. They expect him to restore 
elasticity to the treasury of the establishment by 
being, in his articles, powerful, satirical, or, above all, 
funny. They are always ready kindly to show him 
how to do it. They believe in him, or else why do 
they pay him money for his work ? They do not 



216 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

believe in him, or else why do they bother him ? 
The difficulty is that they do not know exactly what 
they want. This statement must be made with a 
reservation in favor of dividends. These are desired 
most decidedly. When they did not come in to the 
Atlas office, it was evident that I was not the man 
they had supposed me to be. They told me so, at 
some annual or quarterly or monthly meeting ; and I 
answered by showing them a letter from the editor 
of the "New York Tribune," offering me a position 
upon the staff of that newspaper. I have had two 
or three triumphs in my life, and this was one of 
them. It brings me, in rather a roundabout way, 
I fear, to the subject of the present chapter. 

I do not know any man who has been more 
stupidly, nonsensically, and malevolently written 
about than Mr. Horace Greeley. Some even of those 
who desired to speak of him respectfully have 
blundered; when he died, and the whole country 
seemed eager to honor his memory, there was a most 
unnecessary tone of apology for what were regarded 
as his eccentricities and weaknesses. I take issue 
upon both points. I do not consider him to have 
been an eccentric, I most certainly do not think 
him to have been a weak man. It must be re- 
membered that, of all journalists of his time, he 
put his individuality into his newspaper. He made 
it somewhat uncommonly the medium of his private 
and personal opinions about matters which were not 
at all connected with public affairs. In fact, during 



HORACE GREELEY. * 217 

its first years, Mr. Greeley was " The Tribune " and 
" The Tribune " was Mr. Greeley. He did not pro- 
fess to be merely a politician. He had strong 
political attachments, but party itself was always 
his helper, never his master. He had opinions of 
wdiicli no discussion ever occurred in the caucus, 
upon which no popular decision was ever pro- 
nounced at the polls ; and he proclaimed these in 
his newspaper, without once asking whether they 
would help or hurt the business or his party. In 
the beginning, he entertained ideas of labor reform, 
which were afterward somewhat modified, and he 
turned from the consideration of politics and the 
advocacy of nominees, to press these ideas upon 
the public attention. He did not think capital 
punishment to be either humane or expedient, and 
he said so. He was, practically and theoretically, a 
temperance man, and even a prohibitionist, and the 
readers of his newspaper were not left in ignorance 
of the fact. He was interested in agricultural pur- 
suits, and was as likely to write a leading article 
about sorghum as one concerning the next presi- 
dency. In his comparative youth, he held that 
human beiugs should not eat meat; but though he 
cherished this harmless delusion only for a little 
while, he did so with such characteristic enthusiasm 
that half tlie world continued to the last to believe 
that the great editor subsisted entirely upon Graham 
bread and potatoes. 

There were two peculiarities of his intellectual 



218 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

constitution not often found together. He was at 
once speculative and practical. He had a boundless 
hospitality for new opinions, which he desired at 
once to submit to the ordeal of actual experiment. 
But I think that he found out the failures just as 
soon as anybody ; and certainly no one could com- 
ment upon them with drier sarcasm or more good- 
humored frankness. If he had started a Fourier 
phalanx, he would have been the first to discover the 
weak working points. I remember him pulling out 
of his pocket a small bottle of sorghum sugar, con- 
taining probably live ounces, and exhibiting it, half 
sheepishly and half triumphantly, as the net pro- 
duction of his cultivation of that new plant. For a 
mean act he had no mercy ; for a clumsy or careless 
one, but little ; but his fund of good-nature was in- 
domitable. He once, for some reason, reported a 
dinner in " The Tribune," and told the public that 
among the beverages provided were " Heiclseck, claret, 
port, champagne, and other wines." When he was 
chaffed about this, by those who took such liberties 
sometimes, he only laughed, and said, " Well, I am 
the only man in the office who could have made 
such a mistake as that," which, I am afraid, was 
literally true. Almost always overworked, he was 
naturally irritated by intrusions upon his privacy. 
For a long time, his efforts to cloister himself up 
were, I am bound to say, humiliating failures. All 
sorts of people, with the greatest possible variety of 
bees in their bonnets, managed to evade the slight 



HORACE GREELEY. 219 

barriers, get into his presence, and interrupt his in- 
dustry, — people with machines of perpetual motion ; 
with theories about Spiritualism ; with notions about 
the next election ; with business plans only requir- 
ing a small loan to launch them upon the full tide 
of dividend-paying experiment. There were others 
with a passionate desire to borrow small or large 
sums of money; with anxiety to become writers 
upon his newspaper ; with manuscripts which they 
wished to have recommended to some publisher of 
books ; with new religions ; with schemes for the 
abolition of every religion whatever; with mining 
stocks sure to pay a thousand per cent ; with stories 
of personal destitution harrowing to listen to, and 
yet only requiring the loan of a few shillings to en- 
able the petitioner to go to his friends; widows 
whose sole claim upon him or upon anybody was 
that they were widows ; orphans, sometimes suspi- 
ciously well grown, who had nothing to plead but 
their orphanage ; Irishmen who had lost everything 
in a desperate attempt to give the green island a bet- 
ter government; negroes w^ho, perhaps, were born 
free and were merely fugitives from Maine or Mas- 
sachusetts, — all these and many others besieged the 
sanctum, and devised tricks for swindling its occu- 
pant. I am satisfied that if Mr. Greeley could have 
locked his door and kept it locked, he would have 
died a much richer man. He would try sometimes 
to be extremely stern and repellent, but it was 
always a lamentable failure. 



220 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

I happened to witness one interview wliicli was 
sufficiently amusing. A widow, or at least a woman 
in black, wanted to go somewhere, or set up a school, 
or start a mission in some far-away region of Africa, 
or do something for sewing-girls — never mind what ! 
]\Ir. Greeley, who was up to his eyes in work, re- 
peatedly told her to go away, and kept on \A'riting. 
But going away was tlie last thing which the petti- 
coated philanthropist proposed to do. She kept on 
talking, and ]\Ir. Greeley kept on writing as well as 
he could; until at last, in sheer desperation, he 
rushed to the speaking-tube which led to the count- 
ing-room, and bawled querulously through it, "S , 

for God's sake, send nie up five dollars ! " The 
money came up ; and having thrust it into her hand, 
and resolutely discouraged the long speech of thanks 
which she instantly began to make, Mr. Greeley half 
bowed and half put her out of the little room, and 
went back to his work with a complacent smile 
illuminating his amiable face. He had purchased 
his time, and had paid a pretty good price for it. 

It is not easy to reconcile the fine common-sense 
which Mr. Greeley possessed, and which is so evi- 
dent in his political and other public work, with the 
almost infantile simplicity which he sometimes ex- 
hibited when beset by the impecunious and design- 
ing. I attribute many of his mistaken charities to 
impatience of interruption. But there were other 
and larger swindles practised upon him, which re- 
main to this day a mystery, unless we assign them, 



HORACE GREELEY, 221 

as I am inclined to do, to a kindness of heart, which 
a long intercourse with a thankless world had failed 
to impair. His nature must have had two sides. 
Tell him a story of wrong, of injustice, of dishon- 
orable conduct, of selfish falsehood, and he was in 
arms instantly, and made a comment upon the nar- 
rative in which English of the choicest and English 
not quite so polite were piquantly mingled. But 
tell him a story of want, of suffering, of a woman in 
trouble, of a man subjected to undeserved embar- 
rassment, and if the tears did not come out of his 
eyes, the money was pretty sure to come out of his 
pocket. jSTothing moved him to wrath like a lie. I 
am about to say what it is perilous, I know, to say, 
at least in the uncharitable estimation of the public, 
of a newspaper man ; but I am, for the credit of the 
craft, compelled to declare, as I would do under 
oath, that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, 
Horace Greeley never printed anything which at the 
time of printing it he did not believe to be abso- 
lutely true. He may have erred, for to err is human ; 
he may have been misled by feeling, by prejudice, 
or by passion ; but he never, in all his life, averred 
that to be a fact whicli he knew to be a falsehood. 
Perhaps to some readers this praise — for it is meant 
to be praise — may seem to be slight, whereas I offer 
it as the highest tribute to his memory. He was 
not trained in a truthful school. The journalism of 
his youth was far from scrupulous, and for that mat- 
ter, neither was the journalism of his middle age. 



222 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Newspapers are more careful now than tliey once 
were. Public men were at that time egregiously 
libelled with malice prepense. Election returns 
were persistently falsified, political questions were 
elaborately misrepresented. Mr. Greeley had his 
passions and prejudices like other editors, and said 
things sometimes in the heat of controversy which it 
was necessary to retract ; but was there ever a jour- 
nalist readier to acknowledge his error ? indeed, was 
there ever one who absolutely took so much pleasure 
in admitting his mistakes ? Why shouldn't he ? It 
was truth always which he was in pursuit of, — truth 
religious, political, social, scientific. Is it wonder- 
ful, then, that he sometimes lost his temper, when 
he found his opinions misstated, his cherished belief 
ridiculed, his convictions, painfully reached by long 
study and reflection, treated as the whim-whams of 
a notional speculator, his person caricatured, his 
habits belied, the sanctuary of his private life in- 
vaded, his reasonable ambitions ridiculed, his services 
to much smaller men than himself most ungratefully 
forgotten ? I suppose that the word " lie," which he 
was accused of using altogether too freely, had to 
him a peculiar significance. It was short; it Avas 
also unmistakable ; its use was the readiest and 
most convenient method of settling a dispute which 
promised to be endless ; it was a saving of time, 
which was precious, and of space in the newspaper, 
which was more so. He had a faculty of applying 
epithets to his antagonists which stuck, and passed 



HORACE GREELEY. 223 

into the vocabulary of political controversy. He 
could smite an opponent with a phrase, and stop a 
debate which promised to be endless by the adroit 
use of a single word. He used to deal in this way 
sometimes with the long-winded, longitudinous and 
latitudinous correspondents of " The Tribune." He 
would append to a communication of half a column, 
which his love of fair play had betrayed him into 
printing, a couple of lines which made havoc of the 
writer's facts or opinions, or of both. I could give 
a hundred specimens of his dry humor or wit, if 
either needed demonstration. The sharpest or the 
drollest things came out of his mouth with a won- 
derful readiness and ease. For instance, a woman 
had been sending to him verses, some of wdiich he 
printed and some of w^hich he did not. She em- 
ployed a friend to call upon Mr. Greeley and to hint 
to him that pecuniary remuneration would be en- 
tirely acceptable. The plainest of plain speakers 
settled the matter at once. "Tell her," he said, 
" that we should be willing to pay her something for 
not sending us any more." It seems hard, but 
really and at bottom it was benevolent. That phrase 
of his, •' Go West, young man ! " wdiich has been so 
often quoted, was after all the height of pitiful com- 
miseration, as it was also a condensation of whole 
volumes of economical wisdom. To get Mr. Greeley 
at his best expression, it was necessary to make him 
angry. Then every word was like the blow of a 
trained pugilist. He dandled with facts and specu- 



224 REMINISOENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

lated with figures no longer. He never needed then 
to employ the space in the editorial columns which 
-was his as a matter of course, if he pleased to occupy 
it. One ! two ! three ! and the luckless object of his 
wrath fell, metaphorically speaking, before him. 
Sometimes it was only One ! two ! and sometimes, 
indeed, only One ! 

The story of Mr. Greeley's life has been so often 
and so well written, that of its mere details there is 
nothing very new to be given here. Yet lie was one 
of those men about whose personal peculiarities the 
public was always curious. It may please those who 
long read his newspaper with admiration and profit 
to know, that in spite of a certain superficial cyni- 
cism of manner, he was as kind-hearted as a woman. 
He had OTeat control of himself in emero'encies, and 
could meet disaster like a rock. People who thought 
that the result of the presidential canvass killed him, 
little knew the stuff of which he was made. The 
day upon which the child whom he loved so well 
died, saw him at his desk in the office, doing his usual 
work, and evidently striving to get away from the 
desolation of that bereavement, if only for an hour. 

Burke said in his " Letter to a Noble Lord," that 
Nitor in adversum was the only motto for a man 
like himself; and Mr. Greeley's life from the begin- 
ning was a struggle. People thought that he had 
been fortunate, and in the conventional sense of the 
word, perhaps he was. His ambition to build up a 
great newspaper was amply gratified. His desire for 



HORACE GREELEY. 225 

a numerous and respectful constituency T)f readers 
was not less so. If honorable fame was pleasant to 
his soul, he had quite enough of it. But I think 
that he wanted something more. Denounced by his 
enemies as a mere theorist; foolishly proclaimed 
over and over again a man of fantastic notions ; set 
down by some of his critics as an advocate of shallow 
and impracticable changes in the body politic, its 
laws, its customs, its classifications, I think he would 
have liked the opportunity of showing that he was 
not devoid of that plain and simple wisdom by which 
States are well governed, as most assuredly he was 
not. He used to say jestingly, or half so, that there 
was only one office which he desired, — he would 
like to be Postmaster-General of the United States. 
He would have Q'ot rid of much circumlocution in 
that department as it then existed, and have rigidly 
subjected it to the rules of common-sense. He was 
a good member of the House of Eepresentatives ; and 
if he had been made a senator, as he should have 
been, neither the dignity nor the efficiency of that 
august body would have suffered from his presence. 
Considering the stuff of which Presidents of the 
United States have sometimes been made, the pre- 
sumption of his success in that office is by no means 
a violent one. There were those who distrusted his 
ability to read character accurately, and doubted 
whether his appointments would always have been 
wise. As appointments never are, whoever may be 
President, perhaps this matter is not worth discuss- 
15 



226 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

ing, tliougli I should not in the least fear the dis- 
cussion. Here was a man unrivalled in his knowledge 
of the political history of the country, and with a 
natural love of public affairs, whose whole heart was 
in the adjustment of those peculiar and sectional 
differences which, after the war, threatened the sta- 
bility of the Union ; who had dared to believe and 
say that a policy of reconciliation was better than a 
policy of hatred and revenge ; who was of such thor- 
ough integrity that all the forces of gravitation could 
not have fastened a dishonest dollar to his palm ; a 
man trained in the school of exact discussion, and 
with clear and definite opinions ; not without a prac- 
tical knowledge of the conditions necessary to the 
existence of any party ; a belief in justice and right- 
eousness, as well as in the minutest particulars of 
policy. The people decided that he should not be 
their President, and to the will of the people his 
friends and supporters were compelled to bow ; but 
having all my life made a study of Presidents, with 
varying opinions of their qualifications and charac- 
ter, I am satisfied that the office would have suffered 
nothing from Mr. Greeley's incumbency even in 
minor matters. Dr. Johnson used to astonish his 
friends by declaring himself to be a very polite man, 
I believe that substantially Mr. Greeley would have 
made what I may call a courtly chief magistrate. 
He was sometimes harsh of speech, and when he 
i disapproved he did so vigorously ; but he was at heart 
a perfect gentleman, and utterly incapable of pre- 



HORACE GREELEY. 227 

meditated incivility. I am afraid it must be allowed 
that he was dreadfully deficient in deportment. 
There was not an infinitesimal grain of the Turvey- 
drop in his nature. He had no high-shouldered 
graces, and could not, like Sir Archy McSycophant, 
*' boo and boo and boo." But he showed, all through 
the great canvass with which his name will be his- 
torically associated, not merely that speech-making 
ability which nobody had before thought him to 
possess, but also a kindness, a complaisance, and a 
courtesy which were his before, but which were nat- 
urally more and more developed by the occasion. 

It was hard that such a man, in such a great mat- 
ter, should have been so disappointed, and that the 
greater pain of his death should have been added to 
the comparatively insignificant pain of his defeat. 
Something there was of tragedy in it, but something 
also of reassurance. That he should have been 
named for the presidency at all was in itself a tri- 
umph. That such a vast number of his fellow-citi- 
zens should have voted for him was in itself a victory. 
If he had gone back to his newspaper, strong in 
health, he could have amply held his own against 
all comers, with the old cheerful courage and skill. 
It is to use no commonplace of consolation to say 
that his was a better fortune. After such " a busy 
life," it was well that he should cease from his labors. 
He died a private citizen, and he was mourned for 
by the nation. He died after a great failure, and 
his were the obseq^uies of a victor. He died plain 



228 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Horace Greeley, and that, perhaps, was better than 
to die President. 

In the office of the newspaper which he founded, 
a hundred stories are yet told, not only of his be- 
neficence, but of his singular manner of showing it. 
The men under him knew his ways and humored 
them. Those who survive have countless tales of his 
kindness, of his appreciation of good work, and of 
his impatience of th^^t which was not good ; how he 
once, being applied to for a loan, thrust his purse 
into the hands of one of his employes and told him 
to take it, but for Heaven's sake not to interrupt his 
writing ; how one night, when the toil was heavy 
upstairs, he extemporized a banquet of pie and cheese 
upon the composing-stone ; how he once rushed out 
of his sanctum into the editorial room to ask what 
fool wrote a certain article, and how the fool answered 
the question in person. These are but trifling anec- 
dotes ; but the reader may not be impatient of them, 
if they show that the great editor was loved as well 
as respected, and that urbanity of character is not 
inconsistent with perfect plainness of demeanor and 
of speech. 



OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIA TES. 229 



CHAPTER XVII 

OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES. 

Mr. Greeley again. — His Editorial Methods. — His Mem- 
ory OF WHAT PLEASED HIM. — KlCHARD HiLDRETH. — WlL- 

LiAM H. Fky. — The Count Gueowski. — Dr. George 
Ripley. 

ANOTHER word or two of our old and sorely- 
lamented chief! Others have expressed 
pleasure at the characterization of Mr. Horace 
Greeley which I attempted in my last chapter, but 
I am myself far from being satisfied. I recall traits 
which I have missed, and find upon general revision 
that the whole lacks complete justice. I may be 
pardoned if I am sensitive in discharging obligations 
such as I owe to this excellent man. 

Something, I am sure, should have been said of 
Mr. Greeley's quick literary sense. He was a man 
for whom it was a pleasure to work. You thought, 
as you wrote, of how he would like this sentence or 
that illustration, and you were sure of a kind, a 
competent, and a catholic judge. He did not always 
praise ; indeed, he sometimes found a great deal of 
fault, but he did so upon principles which it was 
impossible to dispute, with an intelligence which 
commanded respect, and according to universally 



230 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

accepted canons. He had one great merit as an 
editor, — he comprehended precisely what a leading 
article should be. I do not mean to say that he 
had any peculiar notions : he preferred that a writer 
should be himself, say what he thought, and say it 
in his own way. If he could not do this after a 
fashion commanding readers and respect, Mr. Greeley 
thought that the man had mistaken his vocation, 
and advised him to try farming or some other more 
promising enterprise. An editorial writer, dealing 
mainly with the manager, had but little to do with 
Mr. Greeley, unless that writer happened to make a 
blunder. Then he heard from the small inside 
room, out of which the chief would issue in a state 
of wrath worthy of the gods. 

Thus it will be seen that, whoever might be the 
managing editor of " The Tribune " with whom we 
were mainly brought in contact, it was Mr. Greeley 
who really governed and shaped the sheet. There 
were considerably long periods during which he did 
not write at all. Often he would be absent from 
the office for several weeks ; then he would come 
back, and for a little while fill the whole editorial 
page ; and again he would disappear. But he was 
always the editor of his own newspaper when he 
pleased to be. If he found it taking a direction of 
which he did not approve, there was trouble, and 
sometimes sore trouble, the particulars of which do 
not concern the public. More than once, especially 
during the difficult days of the Rebellion, he brought 



OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES. 231 

the journal round with a sharp turn. In the mere 
matter of having his own way, there never was 
an editor-in-chief more positive and self-asserting. 
Considering how he impressed his personality upon 
the newspaper, I do not so much w^onder at the 
notion of some of his most ancient readers, that all 
the articles which were particularly brilliant must 
have been written by himself. , 

There was the peculiarity about Mr. Greeley's 
intellectual constitution, that whatever pleased him 
he never forgot. I had a personal experience of 
this, which I may venture to relate. I had written, 
soon after I became attached to the newspaper, a 
light little article about the penny songs which were 
then exposed for sale upon the railings of St. Paul's 
Church and in other like localities. Twelve years 
afterward, though I had quite forgotten the trifle, 
of which he did not say a word to me when it was 
printed, I received a note from him expressing the 
wash that this poor old article might be included in 
a volume of my contributions to " The Tribune " 
which I was then compiling. I blushed with satis- 
faction at his kindly suggestion, and actually pulled 
down a dusty old file of the newspaper, that I might 
read what had given such a man pleasure over 
again. When the book was ready, he volunteered 
to write for it an introduction, in wliicli he said 
that of my work which, however undeserved, has 
been a consolation to me under many circumstances 
of misunderstanding and discouragement. Litera 



232 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

scri'pta manent. What tliis consummate judge of 
newspaper writing was pleased to print no con- 
sideration of modesty shall prevent me from here 
reprinting. " In the protracted, arduous struggle," 
he said, " which resulted in the overthrow and ex- 
tinction of American slavery, many were honorably 
conspicuous : some by eloquence ; more by dili- 
gence; others by fearless, absorbing, single-eyed 
devotion to the great end : but he who most skil- 
fully, effectively, persistently wielded the trenchant 
blade of Satire, was the writer of the following 
essays." I think that no man, reviewing his life, 
^vho has received such praise- from such a source, 
would resist the temptation to reproduce it, though 
I hope that I shall be believed wdien I say that I 
do so rather for the sake of the illustration which 
it affords of Mr. Greeley's kindness than from 
any prompting of personal vanity. Such kindly 
traits in the character of one so widely beloved 
will be accepted as a fre^h proof of the generosity 
of his heart, if not of the excellence of his critical 
judgment. 

When I came upon the newspaper in 1857, it had 
already taken the first steps toward a careful and- 
comprehensive journalism, and had ceased to be 
the product of a single mind. A regular foreign 
and domestic correspondence Jiad been established, 
and the editorial contributions had been multiplied 
and improved. Occupying a foremost position upon 
the staff was Mr. Eichard Hildreth, who had been 



OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES. 233 

my predecessor upon " The Boston Atlas," and had 
won an honorable fame, apart from journalism, as a 
writer of valuable books. He had already publislied 
several volumes of his admirable " History of the 
United States," a work of such thorough accuracy 
that the severe and dispassionate style in which it 
is written may be forgiven even by one who admires 
the resoundiag sentences of Gibbon or the brilliant 
climaxes of Macaulay. In his newspaper writing, 
as in his historical compositions, Mr. Hildreth did 
not rely upon the graces of rhetoric. He had no 
humor, and scarcely any wit, but he brought to his 
work such compreliensive knowledge of his subject, 
whether he was discussing finance, or any of the 
questions to winch the institution of slavery gave 
rise, that to answer him was always difficult and 
frequently impossible. I do not think that he 
would now be regarded as a good writer of leading 
articles, except indeed of a limited class. As a rule, 
he was not entertaining, except to those who were 
absorbed in the question which he was discussing ; 
but his hatred of slavery, which he understood thor- 
oughly from personal observation, was hearty and 
uncompromising. His novel of " Archy Moore," 
subsequently called " The White Slave," was actually 
written upon a Southern plantation. 

IMr. Hildreth had been fighting the battle of free- 
dom ever since the annexation of Texas, of which 
measure he was a vigorous and hearty opponent. 
He was of a reserved and somewhat uncommunica- 



234 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

tive nature. He worked much less at the office 
than at home ; and when he was with us he seldom 
engaged in conversation, for which his infirmity of 
deafness unfitted him. His health, I believe, was 
never strong, but, in spite of this, he was an un- 
wearied student ; and a safer writer, when figures 
and facts were concerned, never put pen to paper. 
I think he did very much toward giving the news- 
paper an antislavery tone ; perhaps at one time he 
was in advance of its editor, not in his detestation 
of the institution, but in his eagerness for its speedy 
overthrow ; yet he was permitted to write much as 
he pleased, and the force of political circumstances 
soon made the journal one which the man-owners 
hated quite as heartily as they hated " The Liberator." 
Mr. Hildreth died in Italy in 1865. It is pleasant 
to see that the work upon which he prided himself, 
the " History of the United States," still holds its 
rank, and that new editions of it are still demanded, 
for in its way it is unequalled by any book of the 
class in the English language. 

As I write, I recall, with mingled feelings of 
pleasure and of pain, several able and amiable men 
with whom I then held daily conversation. One of 
them must necessarily be mentioned first, and I 
have given the precedence to Mr. Hildreth, a writer 
formed upon an antique model, the Tacitus of our 
time. As to the rest, they all hold an equal place 
in my memory. Among those whom it was a 
pleasure to meet every day was Mr. William H. 



OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES, 235 

Fry, distinguished not only as a clever newspaper 
writer, but as a composer of acknowledged ability. 
I do not know that any of his musical work yet 
keeps the public ear. Some time before he died 
his friends in Philadelphia were anxious that he 
should witness a careful and complete presentation 
of his opera of " Leonora," upon which, wlien an 
American composer had little chance of being heard 
from the stage, he had expended so much labor for 
the mere love of his art. Some money was lavished 
with the greatest good-will upon the scenery and 
decoration and in the employment of accomplished 
singers. There was a triumph of esteem, but under 
the circumstances that was a matter of course. But 
little of Mr. Fry's musical work survives, at least in 
artistic circles, though it is not long since I heard 
his brilliant " Lancers " played upon a tinkling and 
evidently venerable pianoforte in a beer-cellar. It 
was odd to catch the well-remembered jDassages 
coming up into the daylight and mingling witli the 
roar and rattle and rumble of the Bowery. They 
recalled that fine, intellectual face, to which ill- 
health had lent a pensive expression ; that engaging 
insouciance of carriage, which had in it, nevertheless, 
a suggestion of grave earnestness ; those gentlemanly 
manners which had no superficial gloss, and were 
all the more delightful because gentlemanly man- 
ners are not, unfortunately, so common as they once 
were. 

Mr. Fry, in addition to the musical articles which 



236 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

he contributed to "The Tribune," was a frequent 
writer in the editorial columns. He lihed to discuss 
topics of social interest, matters of fashion, men 
whose follies offered a fair opportunity for satire, and 
the lighter phases of politics. He did this with a 
good-natured badinage, and a hand which, . though 
firm, was not ill-natured. I cannot say that he han- 
dled humbugs, as Izaak Walton directs the angler to 
handle trout, "as if he loved them" ; but the process 
of exposure went on pleasantly, though it usually left 
his victim in a condition of looped and windowed 
raggedness. The sufferer had at least the pleasure 
of being dismembered in admirable English. He 
was slain in a style 'of which Addison would have 
approved, though it might have driven the average 
Professor of Ehetoric mad. During his last days in 
Kew York, Mr. Fry came seldom to the office. The 
summer of 1864 saw him there sometimes, always 
cheerful, and occasionally in those excellent spirits 
which are a characteristic of the disease which was 
then rapidly killing him. He died before the New 
Year, in the island of Santa Cruz, not yet fifty years 
of age, after a life of honorable ambition and of con- 
stant usefulness. Like Taylor and Hildreth, he ex- 
pired far away from that old Printing House Scj^uare, 
winch, while he was living, knew him so well ; and 
if his untimely departure was mourned in many pri- 
vate circles, I am sure that he was not less tenderly 
recjretted in the office of which so often he had been 
the life and the light. 



OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES. 237 

But who is this odd little man, mucli- bearded, and 
with a semi-military stride, in great boots outside 
his trousers, if the weather happens to demand them ? 
The Count Adam Gurowski, Pole, author, revolution- 
ist, after a life of various vicissitudes, has become a 
writer of leading articles upon foreign topics for 
" The Tribune." One who began by being expelled 
from the gymnasium of Warsaw for his radical poli- 
tics, at the early age of thirteen, was extremely likely 
to pass his life in a state of expulsion, at least from 
most European kingdoms. The Count Gurowski 
had for a time been restored to the good graces of 
the Eussian Government ; but matters had gone 
wrong again, and he was now in New York, writing 
for " The Tribune," mainly upon foreign politics, and 
frequently upon his hobby, which was the importance 
and the destiny of the Slavic race. He had not at- 
tained a sufficient knowledge of our vernacular to 
use it with accuracy. His papers in French it was 
necessary to translate ; those in English to submit 
to a pretty rigid correction. Some of them I had 
myself the honor, and I may add the bother, of ma- 
nipulating; and I suppose that I must have done 
the work tolerably well : if I had much blundered, 
the count would have let me know it in a way 
which even now I tremble to think of. For, what- 
ever virtues he may have possessed, he was of a most 
irascible disposition, and could express his wrath in 
a great many languages, leaving those whose philo- 
logical education had been neglected altogether as 



238 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

much at a loss as Dr. Johnson's fish- wife was when 
he called her a preposition. In his wrath, when he 
was stalking about in the great boots which I have 
already mentioned, he presented a somewhat comical 
figure. Poor Fry, who had not a grain of malice in 
his composition, liked nothing so much as to get our 
count into a passion, either by some disrespectful 
allusion to his notions of the Slavic race, or by some 
innuendoes against his ideas of the regeneration of 
society. The exiled Pole was sure to go off like a 
gun at the offence, or rather like a great many guns, 
for there would be a perfect fusilade of English which 
it would be a compliment to call broken ; and all 
the time the little man would be walking about in 
the funniest way, gesticulating, stamping, and I sus- 
pect occasionally swearing, and not in the lea§t ap- 
peased by the smile upon the countenance of his 
antagonist. When he had become calmer, six words 
sufficed to set him off again ; and the fun might have 
been continued indefinitely, if the worthy philoso- 
pher had not fled from the field, or if his tormentor 
had not become tired of his amusement. 

The department of literary criticism was then in 
the hands of Dr. George Ripley, whose recent death 
has been so much deplored. How admirably, during 
a long series of years, he discharged the duties of that 
difficult and delicate position it is quite unnecessary 
for me to say. Those who have relied upon his rec- 
ommendation of books, and who remember how he 
never misled them, as well as those who learned 



OLD FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES. 239 

something of modern works without the expense of 
purchasing or the trouble of reading them, will join 
with me in grateful recollection of the numberless 
reviews of the first order which Dr. Eipley published. 
Swift to praise whenever praise was found possible, 
and habitually disinclined to censure unless it should 
be morally demanded, Dr. Eipley was for over thirty 
years a literary censor, without once exhibiting 
that irritation or prejudice or injustice from which 
our critics have seldom been free. If he spoke well 
of a book, it was safe to buy it ; if he could not speak 
well of it, he usually was silent or nearly so. Tlie 
recollection of his duties thus discharged must surely 
have been pleasanter to him in his mellow old age 
than any celebrity won at the expense of kindness, 
of benevolence, and, I may add, of truth. The days 
of literary butchery have gone by ; reviews written 
merely to "give pain or to gratify spleen are now 
hardly tolerated; the quarterly Zoilus, like Giftbrd 
or Lockhart, no longer tears young poets in pieces, 
or dismisses the honest labor of a lifetime with ridi- 
cule and contempt. In the new and better school 
of criticism. Dr. Eipley won a high and honorable 
position, while at the same time he is entitled to no 
small share of the credit due to its creation and es- 
tablishment. 



240 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 

CONTRIBUTOES AND CORRESPONDENTS. 

Kequirements of Journalism. — Bayard Taylor. — His Boy- 
ish Resolution and Early Travel. — His Letters to The 
Tribune. — His Literary Taste and Latest Work. — 
Egbert Carter. — A Man of Facts. — Edmund Quincy. — 
The Tribune and the Draft Riots of 1863. 

PEEHAPS I overrate the interest of the general 
reader in my old associates who have passed 
away, after distinguishing themselves in the field. of 
journalism, or, though still living, have left behind 
them its troubles and its triumphs. !N"ewspaper 
work is remorseless in its requirements and exigent 
in its demands. In the matter of permanent rep- 
utation, it is scantily rewarded. The same study 
and industry which are expended in the treatment 
of topics of evanescent interest and of temporary 
importance, if employed in a different direction, 
might result in the production of remarkable 
books, with a respectable place in literary an- 
nals. The public, which is mainly interested, may 
congratulate itself upon the fact that, as a rule 
not of course without its exceptions, the journalist 
is an educated gentleman. This may surprise the 
self-constituted censors of the press, yet I do not 



CONTRIBUTORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 241 

fear to say it. A man upon the staff of a news- 
paper is there, as a clergyman is in his pulpit 
and parish, as a college professor is in his recita- 
tion room, as a doctor is in the chamber of sick- 
ness, as a lawyer is in the tribunals of justice. 
None of these need knowledge and tact more than 
he does, and, upon equitable estimation, few of 
them possess more of either than himself It is 
not his fault if he is little known personally to 
the thousands who read him. When all reason 
for an incognito has passed away, it is at once just 
and pleasant to recall his merits and to insist upon 
them, though only for a moment. 

Of course, mention of Mr. Bayard Taylor does 
not require such a preamble as this. He is better 
known to the world as a writer of books than as a 
journalist ; yet, all his life, he was a newspaper man. 
Thirty-eight years ago, he was a bright and hand- 
some boy, setting type in a little printing-office in 
\Yest Chester, Pennsylvania. Four years after he 
was going through his " Wanderschaft," seeing Europe 
as only a pedestrian can see it, with little money 
in his pocket but with a plenty of pluck in his stout 
young heart. I do not offer this as an example to 
the boys of America, except in a certain sense. 
The majority of those who hunger and thirst for a 
sight of distant lands might just as w^ell stay at 
home. They will take nothing away with them, 
and they will bring nothing back. What is admir- 
able in this feat of young Taylor is the resolution 
16 



242 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

which projected and the persistence which accom- 
plished it. Long after, it was curious to observe his 
invincible repugnance to be regarded merely as a 
traveller. I have heard him protest a great many 
times, and sometimes with a modicum of wrath, 
against being so considered, just as Tom Campbell 
was always indignant when anybody spoke of him as 
" the author of the ' Pleasures of Hope.' " 

Mr. Taylor became largely ambitious in those 
last days, and the books of his boyhood seemed 
but small to him in comparison with work which 
he still hoped to accomplish. After so many 
years spent in restless wandering, he had grown 
to love quiet study, the seclusion of his library, 
the companionship of old friends, and more defi- 
nite literary labor. In 1857 I should have had 
the honor and pleasure of making his personal 
acquaintance in the office, if he had not chanced at 
that time to be exploring Sweden and Denmark, and 
riding behind reindeer in Lapland. He saw some- 
thing of all continents and sailed in every sea, and 
up and down all the great rivers, before, in 1875, he 
came back to the office to do regular work, to write 
of current events, and to move once more in the old 
harness. For years before he had sent to his news- 
paper letters bearing all manner of foreign post- 
marks, full of strange adventure, of graphic pictures 
of men, of manners, of scenery, which constitued 
an interesting feature of the journal, and were 
eagerly welcomed by its stay-at-home readers. His 



CONTRIBUTORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 243 

desk was next to mine in the office, which made it 
convenient for me to apply to him for general in- 
formation, and saved me the trouble of walking 
across the room to consult an encyclopaedia. Happy 
the writer who has such a well-informed associate 
at his elbow ! Mr. Taylor was an infallible resource 
when one was at a loss for the right word, and his 
taste, especially in poetical diction, was entirely 
trustworthy. Shall I repeat an instance of its ex- 
ercise ? As I was submitting to its final revision 
my " Carmen Seculare," — for I wrote about the cen- 
tennial anniversary of the republic as so many of 
the verse-makers, not to mention the real poets, did, 
— objection was made to the word "flogs" in the line, 
" From where the Sun flogs up his golden steeds." 
It being determined, greatly against my own judg- 
ment, that the word should come out, I wandered 
around in rather a helpless state, asking everybody 
what I should put in its place. Some were for 
" drives," others suggested " whips " ; but when I 
consulted Mr. Taylor, he instantly said " goads," and 
" goads " it stands to-day, — perhaps a better word 
than " flogs," because less hackneyed and colloquial. 
This anecdote is related specially for the benefit of 
those young ladies and gentlemen who write with 
ease, and forget that easy writing is usually, as 

Sheridan said, "d d hard reading." They cannot 

have a better exemplar than Mr. Taylor. Of course, 
some of his works are of greater importance than 
others ; some of them have been forgotten, and 



244 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

others are destined to be, for his early productions 
are not to be compared with the ripened fruit of his 
middle age ; but always, from the beginning to the 
end, he was painstaking, methodical, a neat as well 
as a dextrous literary laborer. I doubt if in any 
of his poems a slovenly line or an intolerable rhyme 
can be found. 

In his editorial articles, Mr. Taylor was quite at 
home upon almost every topic, always respectable 
in his performance, sometimes excellent ; and this is 
as much as can be said of any journalist with whom 
I have been acquainted. For the rest, Mr. Taylor 
w^as friendly, conversational, always good-natured 
and obliging. His life had been such that he could 
hardly talk of things which he knew better than 
anybody else present without talking of himself; 
and it would be absurd for me to make any com- 
plaint of egotism in these garrulous sketches. I 
have never known a man who was worth much or 
had done anything of importance who was not apt 
to overwork the personal pronoun. Our own, ex- 
periences, thoughts, adventures, failures, and suc- 
cesses are naturally uppermost in our heads and 
most frequently upon our tongues ; and a man who 
has not become accustomed to that " infirmity of noble 
minds " must have had but a small circle of literary 
friends indeed. Mr. Taylor went away from us to 
hold a highly important diplomatic position abroad. 
There was leave-taking, wdth festivity more or less 
formal; there was the hand-shaking, wdth all the 



CONTRIBUTORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 245 

ceremonious formalities ; and then soon after came 
the intelligence that our friend had gone upon that 
long journey which we must all make, — the depart- 
ure which is without any return. We were well 
accustomed in the office to that kind of dreary in- 
telligence, — we have had so much of it through all 
these years, — but here were to be obsequies for 
which we had to wait, and here was sudden news 
for which previous reports had hardly prepared us. 
Happy shall we all be, after the places which 
knew us shall know us no more, if men then speak 
of us as they spoke of our Bayard, — the unresting, 
undaunted worker, the ready and versatile man of 
letters. I put him upon record as one of a craft 
which the world little understands and cannot well 
do without, and take a purer satisfaction in thus 
honoring his memory than I remember to have ex- 
perienced in writing the obituary of any king, soldier 
or politician. 

I have spoken of Mr. Taylor as a man of what I 
may call a consultable turn of mind, but in this re- 
spect he was surpassed by Mr. Eobert Carter, who 
was for several years the Boston correspondent of 
"The Tribune," and who died not long ago. Among 
his personal friends he was known as " the Don," 
because he had a particular knowledge of Spanish 
matters, and had been the amanuensis of Mr. Pres- 
cott, when that admirable historian was engaged 
upon his earlier works. Mr. Carter is embalmed, I 
believe, in James Eussell Lowell's "Fable for 



246 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Critics/' where that writer speaks of going " to the 
Don for the facts." Mr. Carter was the only man I 
have met who knew everything. I could almost make 
oath that I never asked him for information upon 
any point without getting it. His mind, if I may 
say so, was full of pigeon-holes. He was a perfect 
master of the art of book manufacture, and happy 
was the bookselling business which secured his 
services as reader and secretary. He occupied that 
position for some years in the famous house of Little, 
Brown & Co., in Boston, and afterward he was em- 
ployed in that capacity by other like establishments. 
But before that he had much experience in journal- 
ism; had started magazines and seen them fail; 
had, in the course of his life, passed through almost 
every imaginable vicissitude. It was a painful pleas- 
ure to hear him tell of the sorrows of his boyhood, 
which were many, and some of them tragic ; but he 
always did so with a stoical cheerfulness which his 
faith in the doctrines of the Church of the New 
Jerusalem — the Swedenborgian, as men usually 
call it — had done much to insure. He perhaps 
knew more than any other man of the antislavery 
history of Massachusetts, and particularly of that 
portion of it relating to the effects of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law. He had taken a large part in all 
the resistance to that infamous enactment in Boston, 
had risked his life and liberty for the sake of the 
poor hunted runaway ; but he w^ould afterward talk 
of it all half laughingly. Those who were enraged 



CONTRIBUTORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 247 

l)y his philantliropy used to declare that he was a 
Jesuit ; aud he was indeed born and educated a 
Eoman Catholic. He still retained, as all sensible 
]nen must, a great respect for the abilities of the 
Jesuits, notwithstanding his change of religion, and 
I do not think that the accusation troubled him 
greatly. In fact, he was about the serenest and 
most philosophical man whom I have ever seen, — 
the only reformer known to me who alw^ays kept 
his temper and really hated nobody. 

Another Boston correspondent of " The Tribune," 
whose letters were deservedly admired, was Mr. 
Edmund Quincy, who wrote over the signature of 
" Byles." He was well known as a leading aboli- 
tionist of the Garrisonian school, and his being so, 
at first sight, was as much a puzzle as the presence 
of the flies in amber, until it was remembered that 
he was a Quincy, with the bluest of the old revolu- 
tionary blood in his veins. He was the son of 
Josiah Quincy, once president of Harvard College 
and mayor of Boston ; he was the grandson of that 
older Josiah Quincy, of whom, when he was in Lon- 
don upon a patriotic errand. Lord Hillsborough said 
that, if the Government did its duty, " he would be 
in Newgate or at Tyburn." Of course it was not 
easy to silence the descendant of such a patriot. 
Yet Mr. Edmund Quincy was far from being a per- 
son of the least violence or rant. He was a thorough 
gentleman, and therefore he never blustered. He 
loved elegant literary studies, had no passion what- 



248 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

ever for publicity, never indulged in freaks of cos- 
tume nor in frisks of speech ; and though his wit 
had some " of the ice-brook's temper/' he gave his 
opponents their quietus gracefully, and never man- 
gled them. Mr. Quincy's letters were so good, so 
carefully written, and so full of characteristic de- 
tails, that they would well repay collection and 
republication in a volume, not merely for the 
information which they contained, at a time when 
we were making history hand over hand, but as 
models of English composition. Apart from his cor- 
respondence, he wrote little, but I can safely recom- 
mend to every reader of taste his novel of " Wensley," 
and to ever}^ historical student his " Memoir of Jo- 
siah Quincy." 

It would be doing a good work if some competent 
person would write the history of the riot which 
raged in New York City in July, 1863, — the draft 
riot, as it is usually called. The rationale, of mobs 
is about the last thing which municipal authorities 
seem able to comprehend. For four days a horde of 
undisciplined savages bullied the mayor and the 
militia, the police and the posse comitatus. They 
killed and burned, they attacked and demolished, at 
their own barbarous will, making the conscription 
the pretext for their violence, though they were 
really infuriated by hatred of the black race and by 
their coarse sympathy with secession. The office of 
" The Tribune " was a natural object of their hos- 
tility ; and if they did not destroy it by fire, it was 



CONTRIBUTORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 249 

because tliey were cowards as well as cruel and 
bloodthirsty vagabonds. Printing House Square was 
at times full of tliem, and tlie building was like a 
well-appointed arsenal, with sentinels at the doors 
and with muskets and bombs and cannon in readi- 
ness for probable assailants. If these precautions 
had been taken earlier, the little damage which was 
done to the counting-room would have been avoided ; 
for I never saw men who pretended to be brave 
more thoroughly craven. Once when they were 
gathered in great force in Printing House Square, a 
shower of rain sent them flying in every direction ; 
and undoubtedly they had a natural dread of water 
as well as of soap and towels. A resolute body of 
policemen, using their clubs freely, was always suffi- 
cient to put them to flight. They were only valiant 
in maltreating unarmed negroes, helpless women, 
and innocent children ; they were only strong be- 
cause they thought that they had behind them Dem- 
ocrats of the Seymour stripe. When they found 
that the Tribune office was quite ready to give 
them an energetic reception, they stayed away from 
it. Unfortunately, they were prudent as well as 
felonious. If they had made a second attack upon 
the building, the mortal career of a great many of 
them would have been speedily terminated, to the 
great benefit of society. 

The man who was the most thoroughly worried by 
these demonstrations of assault and defence was Mr. 
Greeley. Not that he was in the least frightened by 



250 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the mob, as we shall presently see ; but he had a 
distaste for whatever disturbed the routine of the 
office, and a natural horror of bloodshed which did 
him only credit and proved the kindliness of his 
heart. I believe that I am right in saying that it 
was much against his will that the preparations for 
repelling the rascals were made. The fire-arms dis- 
pleased him, the bombs and other munitions were 
much in his way ; and he declaimed against all these 
instruments of war with a querulousness which was, 
in spite of the seriousness of the situation, sufficiently 
amusing. He had a notion, not perhaps altogether 
ill-founded, that we were as likely to shoot our- 
selves as the enemy. All sorts of falsehoods were 
told in the Copperhead newspapers about his affright, 
whereas he was the most undaunted man in the 
office. When his regular hour for dining came, he 
put on his hat and walked to his accustomed restau- 
rant through a hostile crowd which did not dare to 
lay the weight of a finger upon him. He did not 
go out of the building without earnest remonstrance 
on the part of his friends and associates. He was 
told that the peril was extreme, and that his life 
would be in danger; but he only answered, half 
seriously and half jestingly, that " if the time had 
come when he could not go out to his dinner safely, 
he did not wish to live any longer." 

This extraordinary outbreak was not suppressed 
without great destruction of property and a loss of 
life probably much larger than is usually supposed. 



CONTRIBUTORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 251 

I have been told by a trustworthy person, who was 
at the time a member of the police force, that many 
were killed whose deaths were never reported. The 
number of the slain is usually given as one thou- 
sand; Mr. Draper, in his "History of the Civil 
War," says "perhaps many more." The property 
destroyed has been valued at about $2,000,000. If 
anybody supposes that " The Tribune " was at this 
time inclined to try the virtue of a temporizing 
policy, he has only to consult its files to be disa- 
abused of that notion. The newspaper defied the 
mob; it called vigorously upon the authorities to 
act firmly and promptly ; it characterized the pusil- 
lanimous conduct of Governor Seymour as it de- 
served ; and it gave the whole weight of its sympathy 
to the unfortunate persons of color who were espe- 
cial objects of the rage of the rioters. 



252 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

OLLA PODRIDA. 

Pkogress of Antislavery Agitation. — A Geeat Historic 
Period. — Newspapers before that Time. — The Miller 
Excitement. — Garroting in New York in 1857. — The 
BuRDELL Murder. — Things which have had Kuns. — The 
First Dress Reform. — Cheap Books and Newspapers. 

FIPiST things are always interesting. I have had 
the curiosity to go to the files, and there to 
read the first leading article which I contributed to 
" The Tribune." It was printed upon the first day 
of January, 1857, — the first, it will be seen, still 
predominant, — and, upon the whole, it was not 
badly done. It was a review of A. D. 1856, — a 
pretty important year, considering that it witnessed 
almost the culmination of the antislavery agitation, 
and that memorable outrage, the assault upon Mr. 
Sumner in the senate-chamber, — a matter small to 
look at if considered altogether by itself, but large 
in its historical importance and in its influence upon 
the public feeling of the country. As I look back 
at it, I recall that evening in Boston when the news 
of it came to us, when, taking my pen in hand to 
write of it, I found to my astonishment that I could 
not write a word which did not seem tame, and must 
be content with a somewhat commonplace paragraph. 



OLLA POD RID A, 253 

All the people of the United States should have felt 
it as if the coward blows had rained down upon each 
individual head ; but we felt it in Massachusetts as a 
coarse insult to the State, and for a moment we were 
dumb with astonishment and rage. It was not Mr. 
Sumner wdio had been smitten, — it was an ancient 
commonwealth, which for nearly three hundred 
years had maintained a semi-sovereign condition, 
which boasted of the Pilgrim Fathers, of Samuel and 
John Adams, of the massacre of 1770, and of the 
Tea Party in 1773. The reader will pardon these 
trite historical allusions ; he cannot understand 
them unless he is by birth a Massachusetts man, as 
I am proud to be. The old State has lost something, 
indeed a great deal, of its grand and commanding 
political position, as nobody knows, if I must say it 
with some mortification, better than I do ; but I may 
plead, in extenuation of any undue complacency, that 
Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill had not 
been fifty years in history when I was born, and men 
still spoke of these initial battles almost as if the 
courage and the carnage were of yesterday. 

It is something to have lived during a great his- 
toric period. It is everything for a journalist to have 
a great topic, which will repay constant attention 
and to which he can give his best thought. IN'ews- 
papers, before the antislavery question got its thor- 
ough hold upon the popular mind and heart, Avere 
somewhat superficial and made up in rather a trifling 
way. The politics of the preceding period were 



^54 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

small. There was no profession of journalism. Men 
drifted into the management of newspapers out of 
other callings. Having done this, they trifled. Never 
for a moment did they think of leading. They joked 
and bantered and sneered ; they used the scissors and 
paste-brush much more than the pen ; there was no 
method, no system, no management, no earnest pur- 
pose, — nothing but personal scolding and partisan 
wrath. The antislavery discussion, if I may give my 
opinion, made the American press of the higher class 
what it is. It enlarged views and it diversified 
methods. The telegraph and tlie railway and the 
steamboat did the rest. 

In the earlier, simpler times a poor squib in the 
newspaper went a long way; a lean poem in the 
Poet's Corner cut a considerable figure ; and as for 
the jests, they were much too old to be fathered 
upon that putative parent of many dubious children, 
Joe Miller. A good bit of news lasted a long time. 
An earthquake was a godsend. Tlie comet of 184-3 
was, if I may sa}^ so, paragraphed and articled to 
death. I mention it particularly because Mr. Buckle 
would have connected it, after his philosophical 
method, with the Miller excitement, which then stood 
at about eighty degrees above zero according to the 
spiritual thermometer. The hens liad laid eggs mys- 
teriously marked " 1843 " ; loug-bearded and long- 
haired preachers had howled" destruction from a 
hundred pulpits; itinerant lecturers had demonstrated 
the Second Advent with hideous diagrams behind 



OLLA PODRIDA. 255 

them whereon were depicted the four great beasts 
seen by Daniel in his dream, — the lion with eagle's 
Avings ; the bear with three ribs in his month ; the 
four-winged leopard ; and the fourth creature with the 
great iron teeth. If Daniel was agitated by these 
zoological monsters B. C. 555, a great many men, 
women, and children were frightened almost mor- 
tally by the counterfeit presentment of them A. D. 
1843, especially when somebody, in very bad gram- 
mar and with many violent gesticulations, deduced 
from them the end of all terrestrial things. What, 
then, must have been the consternation when a blaz- 
ing comet came as if to confirm indisputably the 
ferocious predictions of Captain William Miller ! 
The most sceptical began to feel uncomfortable. I 
am not ashamed to say that I did, for one. If I 
had not been very busy at the time reporting the 
misdeeds of the Democratic party in the Massachu- 
setts Legislature and belaboring bad law-making 
which promised anything but the millennium, I might 
have become a convert and bought myself an ascen- 
sion robe. In this, no doubt, had there been occa- 
sion, I should have gone up singing as sweetly and 
demeaning myself as gracefully as the rest. But 
there was no occasion. We had the wonderful hens 
and all the rest of the nonsense for some time in 
the newspapers ; then something else came, I do 
not remember wdiat, to displace Captain Miller and 
his sham millennium ; and fifty thousand believers 
were egregiously chagrined. 



256 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

There is always, if I may use the expression, a 
run on something in the public journals; I have 
made mention of one, ridiculous enough to look 
back upon : but everything in the shape of a public 
scare seems absurd when we get far enough away 
from it. The fright in New York during that cold 
January of 1857 was occasioned by garroting. El- 
derly gentlemen, walking out for a constitutional 
after dinner, were first strangled and afterward de- 
spoiled of their valuables. Peace men, even the 
mildest of non-resistants, bought revolvers. Upon 
comparing pockets one evening in the office, it came 
out that we were all armed and equipped as the law 
of fear directed, and had no notion, after murdering 
the King's English all night at our desks, of being 
ourselves unresistingly murdered on our w^ay to our 
welcome beds. The excellent Count Gurowski, I 
remember, had a large lire-arm, which he flourished 
at destiny in a particularly defiant way. It was 
curious to observe that this was an imported panic. 
We got the notion of our danger from London, wdiere 
the honest citizens were agitated by similar appre- 
hensions, perhaps with more reason. I do not be- 
lieve that there was any more risk in walking home 
late at night than there is now. It was one of our 
whimseys. However, I wrote several yards of edi- 
torials upon the subject, and, upon the whole, made 
a good thing out of it ; so that I was much better 
worth choking and plundering on the evening of 
pay-day than I could possibly have been forty-eight 
hours before or afterward. 



OLLA PODRTDA. 257 

. We want some T)e Quincey to dilate philosophi- 
cally upon our memorable murders. We have had 
so many homicides since, that possibly some of my 
readers may have forgotten that Dr. Burdell, a den- 
tist well known in his profession, was assassinated 
in his rooms between Friday night and Saturday 
morning, January 30 and 31, 1857, and that Mrs. 
Cunningham, who kept the lodging-house, and two 
lodgers in it, Eckell and Snodgrass, were suspected 
of this crime and were tried for it. The house was 
No. 31 Bond Street, — I forget whether there is a 
hair-restorer, a milliner, a bookseller, or a wooden- 
leg maker there now. The doctor parted with a 
friend in Broadway ; went home undoubtedly ; and 
that was the last which was seen of him alive, ex- 
cept by the operator who gave him his quietus. As 
the shocking event made necessary a great number 
of editorial articles, the manager sent me up to look 
at the premises, and to watch the coroner, whose 
name was Connery, and who was himself almost 
murdered, metaphorically speaking, by the press, 
before he had finished his investigations. He was 
particularly abused for his suspicions of the guilt of 
Mrs. Cunnimijham and other inmates of the house, 

CD ' 

and it must be allowed that he did not conduct the 
investiiijation after a Chesterfieldian fashion. When 
I was admitted by the policeman on guard at the 
door, I went into the great, cold, vulgar-looking par- 
lors, with those cheap and dreadful pictures upon 
the walls which are displayed in all such asylums 

17 



258 REMIXISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

for the homeless. Mr. Connery was cross-examining 
the Hon. Daniel Ullman, then a Know-Nothing pol- 
itician of some little importance, who was a lodger 
also at No. 31. Dr. Burdell was dead on the second 
floor; and Mrs. Cunningham and the Misses Cun- 
ningham, like the widow in " The New Way to Pay 
Old Debts/' were " cloistered up " in some remote 
part of the edifice. It was a house, as I remember 
it, in which murder would naturally be committed ; 
it was cold and comfortless, the furniture was 
all horsehair and ponderous mahogany ; and I fan- 
cied the doctor's room as dreadful without reference 
to its battery of surgical instruments or his own in- 
animate presence there at the moment. There was 
a pervading dampness and stickiness, as you went 
in, like that in Mr. Crook's residence after his com- 
bustion. Official boots had muddied the carpets, 
official cigars had demoralized the atmosphere, 
official documents in official side-pockets had re- 
duced the sacred sense of a home to the unfragrant 
publicity of a police-court lobby. I do not think 
that even before the sudden demise of the doctor, 
which made Bond Street a particularly nice place to 
remove from, the Cunningham mansion could have 
been a cheerful place of residence, wdiether morally 
or materially considered. The matronly Mrs. Cun- 
ningham had not an assuring record ; and when poor 
Dr. Burdell let his house to her, — for he owned it, — 
retaining the second floor, he got into one scrape 
which was speedily followed by others. Who killed 



OLLA POD RID A. 259 

liim ? How should I know ? We discussed the 
question for months afterward ; everybody who was 
indicted for the murder was acquitted. They buried 
the doctor with his body so full of wounds that ex- 
perts (abstract, of course) said that they must have 
been multiplied by feminine vehemence ; the Lucre- 
zia of the tragedy disappeared from New York ; has 
been reported dead and sunk in the ocean ; has been 
also reported living in California. The whole affair 
went into history before the summer of 1857 had 
dried the mud in front of the house ; and when I 
passed it the other day, in my walk down town, it 
looked so quiet and respectable that I could hardly 
be sure that it was the same residence which for 
seven days the gaping crowd stared at from the 
other side of the street. That old saw that " murder 
will out " is all well enough in novels and dramas of 
the Bowery school ; but every journalist knows that 
there are a great many murders, the explanation of 
which is calmly awaiting the great Oyer and Termi- 
ner of the Day of Judgment. The last which I re- 
member of the event, which for a time monopolized 
our New York talk is, that going upon business soon 
after through the Tombs, my polite and much-but- 
toned conductor showed me the cell occupied during 
her imprisonment by la helle dame sans merci It 
still looked as neat and orderly as if feminine hands 
had arranged its scanty furniture, and a clean white 
coverlet upon the bed was suggestive of innocence. 
I became straight\\'ay full of pity, — the old sympa- 



260 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

thy whicli I have never been able to get rid of for 
a woman in trouble ; and I did not feel quite re- 
lieved in my mind until I had gone down stairs and 
interviewed three undoubted murderers, all of whom 
declared to me their perfect innocence, and two of 
whom, a few mornings after, came out of their cells, 
and, never going back again, became in a few hours 
the unconscious heroes of the evening newspapers. 

Pleasanter tlian a Newgate Calendar adapted to 
the meridian of New York, which my last recollec- 
tion suggests, would be a History of Things Which 
Have Had Pams, — of reforms which never got 
much further than projection ; of schemes intended 
to make everybody healthy and happy, which some- 
how or other fell short of their benevolent purpose. 
What Isms have I seen spring up and sprout, and 
flourish and fade away! That harmless termina- 
tion "ism," has surely been much overworked. It 
fits handily enough to a surname, only the surname 
itself has such a trick of giving up the ghost. The 
blossoms of the Tree of Knowledge have such a way 
of falling off, and disappointing us of the fruit. 
There was the Dress Eeform, for instance, which 
was started by a lady bearing the efflorescent name 
of Bloomer, Inde, " Bloomerism," as perhaps the 
man of middle age may remember. Somewhere 
about 1854 it was, I think, that there came a loud- 
voiced protest against long skirts from the strong- 
minded woman of the West above mentioned. She 
was a moral person, I believe, and therefore she 



OLLA PODRIDA. 261 

could not have got her notion of costume from the 
variety theatres ; possibly she got it from the parti- 
colored posters; but, poor dear lady, she wanted 
to make all American girls, and mothers too, I 
suppose, dress exactly like the Circassian Beauty — 
Miss Snevellicci or Miss Mortimer — in the six- 
cent show. Those who submitted to this apparel 
were called " Bloomers " ; and, as there were not 
many of them, it was a great amusement for the 
young boys to run after them in the streets, and for 
the old boys to peep slyly around the corner at 
them. I was one of the middle-aged, and, of course, 
took no notice whatever of these Zuleikas, as they 
promenaded under their lovely umbrellas. The 
newspapers were full of humorous allusions to these 
fanciful dressers — I dare say that I myself wrote 
dozens of squibs about them, bad and indifferent. 
If my memory serves me, there was a waist of one 
bright color, and a skirt coming to the knees of an- 
other bright color, or perhaps variegated, and then 
trousers of the Turkish variety, buttoned at the 
ankle. This was the protest of 1853 against long 
skirts ! If I were Professor Teufelsdroeckh, what a 
quantity of excellent moral philosophy might I here 
inflict upon my readers apropos of the freaks of 
fashion ! But the truth is, the Bloomer abbrevia- 
tion never was in fashion, although its well-inten- 
tioned deviser made it almost a matter of religion. 
Since that time the w^orld has witnessed many 
bolder innovations ; but the intuitive good taste and 



262 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

common sense of the American woman have pre- 
vailed over the passion for outre novelties; and I 
hope that it will continue to do so, in spite of the 
howls of amateur physiologists, and the ingenuity 
of those who always contrive to be in a lean 
minority. 

There are fashions in popular literature as well 
as in dress. Just about forty years ago there began 
to be a demand for cheap books and for newspapers 
which, considering their size and the enormous 
amount of reading matter which they contained, 
were sold at a small price. Perhaps it was about 
this time that the phrase "yellow-covered litera- 
ture" came into vogue, perhaps it was a little 
later. The type used in printing these books was 
necessarily small, and frequently it was old and 
battered, while the press-work was not of the best ; 
and these faults, with the character of many of the 
"vvorks thus issued, drew from Edward Everett, when 
he was president of Harvard College, a bitter pro- 
test against publications which began by corrupting 
the reader's morals and ended by ruining his eyes. 
Now, cheap books are not, as a rule, ill-printed ; and 
the newspaper sheet has been enlarged to such an 
extent that the weekly publications of 1840 do not 
seem so gigantic as they were then thought to be. 
Even then some of the books sold at small prices 
were quite handsomely printed. I have before me 
a copy of Sir Francis Head's " Bubbles from the 
Brunnens of ISTassau," — a delightful work, by the 



OLLA PODRIDA. 263 

way, — which was issued by Mr. George Dearborn, 
in Gold Street, and sold very low, which is really 
a pretty pamphlet. There were two of the large 
weekly newspapers published in New York — " The 
World" and "Brother Jonathan" — and both of them 
were well edited and well printed. They gave 
seriatim, but in large instalments, the novels of 
Mr. Dickens, of ]\Irs. TroUope, of Mrs. Gore, and of 
other writers of fiction ; and their general literary 
make-up was excellent. Only a few newspapers of 
this class of the present day now excel them ; and I 
have no doubt they furnished Sunday reading of a 
wholesome kind to considerable numbers. There 
must have been either bad management or some 
fatal discrepancy between the cost of manufacture 
and the price obtained ; for these big sheets, with a 
similar one printed by George Eoberts in Boston, 
disappeared, I ought to say that these giants, as 
we thought them to be, would not now be consid- 
ered so gigantic ; they were folios of the blanket 
sort, and not easy to handle. In our days of many- 
paged newspapers, they w^ould hardly be bought at 
all. In the business of reprinting cheap foreign 
works the competition was great, and sometimes 
ruinous. There was, I remember, a large demand 
for translations from the French. There were two 
or three different reprints in English of Eugene 
Sue's lurid novel, " The Mysteries of Paris," and the 
publishers squabbled about the respective merits of 
their issues as if they had been patent medicines. 



264 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

The business was overdone ; and when it came to 
cheap translations of the novels of Paul de Kock, 
the moralists began to open their eyes. It was a 
day of paper covers ; and now another like it ap- 
pears to have arrived. Yet it is only just to admit 
that cheap books are much better printed than they 
once were, and that in the department of prose 
fiction there has been a great improvement upon 
the side of decency. We still find occasionally a 
noisome novel attaining at least notoriety; but 
" cheap and nasty " is no longer so nearly the rule 
as it once was. 



A LAST '"TRIBUNE" RECOLLECTION. 265 



CHAPTEE XX. 

A LAST "tribune" EECOLLECTION. 

The Private History of a Newspaper, — Methods and 
Mistakes. — Domestic Critics. — "Tom " Rooker. — 
Good Copy and Bad. — Bidding the Old Office Fare- 
well. — The Young Poets. — Mr. E. C. Stedman. — The 
Diamond Wedding. — Newspaper Correspondence, past 
AND present. 

COULD there be anything more interesting than 
the history of a leading newspaper intelligently 
and cleverly written ? Apart from other considera- 
tions, it would, in fact, be the history of notable 
political chances and changes ; of parties rising to 
meet the exigencies of the time, surviving w^hile 
they were needed, and dying when they were needed 
no longer. But this relation of newspapers is not 
what is mainly in my mind as I begin this chapter. 
I am thinking of the private experiences, the in- 
terior vicissitudes, the memories and mortalities, 
and that tradition of triumphs and of failures of 
wliicli the public know so little, and of which an 
old journalist knows so much. If I may venture 
to say so, the office of a newspaper is a repubhc 
tempered by despotism. The men who make jour- 
nals are obliged to think for themselves, but this 
intellectual independence must be kept within cer- 



266 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

tain limits. Still, an editorial writer who lias any 
brains soon finds out wliat he may say and what 
lie may not say, and how far he may put his private 
opinions into his articles. When I asked for some 
convenient rule to guide me in wanting for " The 
Tribune," Mr. Greeley told me that there could be 
none ; " but you will be safe," he said, " while you 
keep within the general tone of the newspaper ; and 
if you write what we don't want, you may be per- 
fectly sure that we shall not print it." Yet it is 
always a delicate business. What seemed excellent 
in the evening did not seem so fine in the morning. 
Newspaper writers make sad mistakes, well cal- 
culated to fill the bosom of the editor-in-chief with 
despair. Things get into the columns which ouglit 
to have been kept out of them. Constant vigilance 
is the price of safety, even of the comparative sort. An 
ill-considered article may bother a newspaper, and be 
a perpetual source of irritation for a year to come. 

Take, for instance, that wonderful article on 
" Miscegenation," which I wrote for " The Tribune," 
in which, half sportively and half seriously, I de- 
monstrated that the intermarriage of blacks and 
whites was just what this great and glorious repub- 
lic needed. The trouble was that the irony was so 
finely spun that nobody could see it, and everybody 
thought that the writer was in absolute earnest. 
Those were times in which we had to be careful 
what we said ; and Mr. Greeley, who saw endless con- 
troversy ahead, was angry enough at the appearance 



A LAST '' TRIBUNE'' RECOLLECTION. 267 

of the article. He did not scold me, — I am proud 
to say that he never did that, — but I have reason 
to believe that he scolded the manager, who then 
expressed his mind to me, which answered just as 
well. It was like that scene in Sheridan's " Rivals," 
in which the master kicks the footman, and the 
footman kicks the page. 

Of the toil which a newspaper demands, of the 
unceasing attention which it exacts, of the judicious 
care which it requires, the great public of readers 
takes no account. Those who come to the breakfast- 
table, more or less bilious, expect to find in their 
morning sheet something like perfection, and I do 
not mean to say that they are not right in expecting 
it. But when they glance hastily over the columns, 
and then judicially declare that there is nothing in 
them, they may often forget that there is everything 
in them of importance which has happened in the 
whole world during the last twenty-four hours ; 
that fifty, seventy-five, one hundred, may be one 
hundred and fifty, men toiled all night while these 
captious critics were sleeping, their heads, as Carlyle 
says, " full of the foolishest dreams," — worked to 
make up this great compendium, this map, the 
picture of a day, " its fluctuations and its vast con- 
cerns." It might lead the dissatisfied purchaser to 
revise his judgment if he could stand, between one 
and two o'clock in the morning, in the composing- 
room of a great journal, and witness the intense 
excitement, all kept well under in well-regulated 



268 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

offices, wliich characterizes the " make-up " of the 
sheet which he sometimes dismisses so contempt- 
uously. The night editor, if then in a state to 
speak to anybody rationally, might tell him that 
the great point was not so much what should go in 
as what should be left out. For there never was a 
morning paper yet which was big enough for all the 
matter prepared for it; and there never can be. 
The larger the sheet the more news will come to it, 
— for every additional column, three columns of 
intelligence, or of matter of some sort, will demand 
admission. Again, the rule is that there shall be 
no mistakes. It is inexorable, yet thrice happy is 
the journal in the office of which it is never violated. 
There are more mistakes than the sagacious public 
ever finds out. Nowhere is a newspaper so criticised 
as among those who create it. 

The other day Mr. Thomas K Eooker, who was 
long foreman of " The Tribune," and who still serves 
it in another capacity, told me that he had been con- 
nected with it ever since the first day of its publica- 
tion. In fact, I hope that he will not mind my 
mentioning that he who laid the first type in the 
cases has grown white in the service, and has no 
end of reminiscences of his own under his " frosty 
pow." How many " forms " he has " made up " it 
would be a great arithmetical job to compute, as 
w^ell as how many miles of copy he has dissected, 
pasted, and distributed. He has stored away more 
anecdotes of Mr. Greeley than any man living. One 



A LAST ''TRIBUNE'' RECOLLECTION. 269 

of the strangest things is that there should be so 
many printers, no longer on the newspaper, who 
know me, and whose names and faces have entirely 
passed out of my memory. I meet them on the cars 
and in the street, and they come up to me, and put 
out their hands and hope that I am well, and begin 
to talk of the old times in a genial way which quite 
upsets me. They remember all about the character 
of the copy, — the astonishing and, to eyes unfam- 
iliar with it, altogether illegible chirography of Mr. 
Greeley ; the almost equally difficult handwriting 
of Mr. Hildreth; the beautiful manuscript which 
they got from this member of the staff or the other. 
These men were interested critics of penmanship : 
their bread and butter, the money they were to 
receive at the end of the week, depended a good deal 
upon its excellence. This is a consideration which 
I am afraid does not often enough occur to literary 
people, who seem to fancy that a compositor can 
read anything. According to tradition, the very worst 
manuscript ever sent into a printing-house was that 
of Sharon Turner's " Sacred History of the World." 
Either from motives of economy or from sheer whim, 
he wrote upon anything that came to hand, — wrap- 
ping-paper in which his mutton-chops had been 
sent home, old letter-backs, marginal bits cut from 
the newspapers, the fly-leaves torn from odd volumes. 
Having covered tliem with hieroglyphics which 
were hardly human, and pasted the fragments to- 
gether as best he could, he gave the mysterious 



270 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

mess (if I may call it so) to the printer. Composi- 
tor after compositor profanely rebelled against the 
"Sacred History," and fled half crazy from the 
office. It is a wonder that the work, which is one 
of great merit, ever got into type at all. I give 
this anecdote in the interest of my old friends, tlie 
printers; and I implore all who have occasion to 
offer any manuscript to a newspaper not to take 
money out of the pockets of honest artisans by 
indulging in a slovenly and, I may say, felonious 
handwriting. 

There are scores of associates whom one remem- 
bers kindly. When the old office was in process of 
demolition, and we w^ere removing from the editorial 
rooms into temporary quarters, I sat down amidst 
all the dust and rubbish and litter, and prepared 
perhaps the last article, certainly almost the last, 
which was written in that ancient chamber. I spoke 
of the dead as I hope that they would have spoken 
of me, if they had been there and I had been where 
they were. I took a last peep into the little snug- 
gery in which Mr. Greeley had done so much impor- 
tant work, and I said to myself, " The place which 
knew him shall know him no more forever." But 
of most of '' the old companions trusty," only the 
ghosts were there to share my last adieu. I thouglit 
of the day when I climbed the steep stairs for the 
first time ; of how much I had hoped to do, of liow 
little I had done; of the numberless talks which 
I had enjoyed in the shabby room; and I might 



A LAST ''TRIBUNE'' RECOLLECTION. Ti\ 

liave lapsed into maudlin deptlis of dubious senti- 
mentality if it liad not been quite time to go to my 
dinner. I gave a moment of recollection to the un- 
celebrated wlio had drifted into the office and- drifted 
out of it, and passed away and been forgotten. I 
recalled fleeting celebrities and short-lived reputa- 
tions ; men who had made a first hit, and never 
made another ; those who had tried hard, and never 
made a liit at all. Oh, this great, absorbing, cavern- 
ous, hissing, roaring, foaming whirlpool of journalism! 
How it sucks in talent, genius, learning, brains, 
hopes, ambitions, aspirations ! Of the hundreds 
who are called, how few are chosen ! What infinite 
variety of ability it demands ! What tact, knack, 
care, and industry ! We must speak well of each 
other, old friends, for nobody else will have much 
to say of us. We are to the Temple of Fame as 
curb-stone brokers are to the legitimate Exchange. 
We nmst content ourselves with making all the 
noise possible while we are living, for very little 
noise shall we make after we have finally departed. 
The reader who cannot share my personal sympa- 
thies will surely pardon some allusion to one of 
whom he may never before have heard. Something 
I ought to say specially of my old friend, John Fitch 
Cleveland, whom we buried on a bright November 
day in 1876. I have an immense respect for a man 
of figures, although I could never myself handle 
them with the least dexterity ; and my friend was 
particularly an adept in tlie manipulation of those 



272 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

most exasperating and incomprehensible columns, — 
the election returns. I may as well confess that I 
have never been much excited by them through all 
these years. Whatever the issue of the conflict, I 
understood that there was no prize for me ; and 
however adverse to the principles of truth and jus- 
tice and political sense and political morality, the 
success of one party and the defeat of another might 
prove, I knew that the right was sure to have fair 
play in the long run in this republic. In our office 
somebody was always figuring and adding and sub- 
tracting ; noting a gain in this county and a loss in 
that congressional district ; balancing the propriety 
of this measure and the expediency of that nomina- 
tion. It was necessary, I suppose, and I do not 
mean to complain of it, even if it was unnecessary ; 
but I took more interest in some wretchedly small 
minority which represented a principle than in the 
announcement of triumphant majorities which meant 
only the aggrandizement of j)oliticians. I kept hard 
to my w^ork, with a single eye to the future, and let 
the election returns go. It was different with poor 
Cleveland: it was his business to take care of 
them. His name appears as compiler upon the title- 
page of several numbers of that useful annual, " Tlie 
Tribune Almanac." He held for a time the respon- 
sible position of financial editor, and WTote long 
articles, which to me were equally mysterious with 
the election returns. Yet I have no doubt of the 
ability, and none whatever of the honesty of his re- 



A LAST '' TRIBUNE'' RECOLLECTION. 273 

ports from Wall Street ; and I am sure in that region 
of bulls and bears that he is pleasantly and respect- 
fully remembered. There is no association of lucre, 
of financial phenomena, of panics and Black Fridays 
to mar my own recollection of his sweet nature, of 
his amiable manners, and always obliging disposi- 
tion. He was one of the most competent journalists 
of all \vork whom I have ever known. He could do 
anything tolerably, and a great many things admira- 
bly. He bore up bravely against the disease which 
was killing him ; but we saw him less and less fre- 
quently at the office, and finally came the intelli- 
gence that we should never see him there again. I 
mention Mr. Cleveland, partly because I was sin- 
cerely attached to him, and partly because his story 
affords an excellent illustration of what I have just 
said of the fleeting character of the journalist's fame. 
I take a peculiar pleasure and an honest pride in 
thus mentioning to old and faithful readers the 
names of some of those to whose ability and labor 
they have been indebted for pleasure and for in- 
formation. I never cared much for notoriety, and 
have been content to follow my profession in an ob- 
scurity wdiich it might seem vain to characterize as 
comparative ; yet I like to have my old associates 
remembered, and have found a satisfaction in speak- 
ing of more than one of them in these pages. 

It is a particularly honorable feature of the history 
of " The Tribune " that it has always extended a 
hospitable reception to young writers who had their 

18 



274 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

laurels yet to win. Mr. Greeley's literary taste was 
nearly perfect, and if good original poems were sent 
and happened to come under his eye, they were 
pretty sure of a place in the columns. When Mr. 
Edmund Clarence Stedman, who was then a much 
younger writer than he now is, and by no means so 
well known, offered his poem about "Lager Bier," 
Mr. Greeley was much pleased with it, which was 
the more remarkable because he probably did not 
know the taste, even if he knew the smell, of the 
mild tipple which Mr. Stedman celebrated so me- 
lodiously. He called out from his den that the poem 
reminded him of Thackeray's ballad of "Bouilla- 
baisse " — a remark worth repeating, not because 
Mr. Stedman's poem is particularly like Mr. Thack- 
eray's, but because it shows that Mr. Greeley was 
familiar with the great novelist's best things. There 
w^as a wedding about that time which created much 
sensation in New York society of a certain class, and 
which was very fully reported and magnified and 
glorified and commented upon in the New York 
newspapers. It was called " The Diamond Wed- 
ding," because the bride was reported to have re- 
ceived most costly gifts of precious gems. Mr. Sted- 
man came forward with a light satire upon fashiona- 
ble frivolities and unequal matches, which was 
printed. The young bard meant no harm, but he 
nearly involved the newspaper in a libel suit for 
which there was not the least possible reason, and 
himself in a duel with the irate papa of the bride, 



A LAST '\TRIBUNE'' RECOLLECTION. 275 

which would have been more unreasonable still. 
Alas ! this was a great many years ago, but I recol- 
lect that we had no end of fun out of it at the time. 
I cordially bear testimony to the fact that Mr. Sted- 
man was much pluckier about the matter than he 
would probably be in a like affair just now, since 
years have brought him multiplied responsibilities, a 
literary reputation well worth nursing, and, if he 
will pardon me for saying so, just a little more of 
the commodity called and known as common sense. 
If the war advanced American journalism in every 
way, it did so particularly in the creation of a corps 
of clever correspondents, who reduced reporting in 
the field to something like a science. Even before 
the war the correspondence of the newspaper was 
an important feature, and a great deal of money was 
lavished upon it. Mr. Taylor's letters I have already 
mentioned, as well as those written from Boston by 
Mr. Quincy and Mr. Carter, and the rather inde- 
pendent bureau of his own which Mr. Pike main- 
tained in Washington. Mr. Greeley himself was an 
admirable letter-writer, and did things in that way 
which have never been surpassed. Feats were per- 
formed which are still mentioned with reverence 
and respect. One of these was that of Mr. Morti- 
mer Thompson, better known as " Doesticks," who 
visited Georgia to attend the sale by auction of the 
slaves of Pierce Butler, the husband of Fanny Kem- 
ble, and wrote an amusing account of that vendue. 
Of course Mr. Thompson took his life in liis hand 



276 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

when he went upon that errand. So did the man 
who stayed in Charleston through all the hot days 
preceding the secession, and mailed letters regu- 
larly to New York, which furnished us with an 
authentic record of the* malign progress of treason. 
He, too, would have had but a small chance of at- 
taining old age if he had been discovered. As usual, 
the self-constituted critics of newspapers knew per- 
fectly well that his letters wxre not written in 
Charleston, as most assuredly they were. By the 
way, there is an opinion quite prevalent among 
ill-informed people that all letters, whether from 
Paris or St. Petersburg or London, or other foreign 
locality, are written in the ofhce of the journal in 
which they appear. I have been told gravely by a 
man who was not altogether an idiot that he knew 
that nine tenths of the foreign correspondence of the 
larger journals was of this bogus description. He 
saw neither the folly nor the impossibility of keep- 
ing up this kind of deception ; nor did I think it 
worth much expenditure of breath to undeceive him. 
This is the last of " The Tribune " chapters. Much 
more might be written, but I have Avritten enough. 
If my thoughts have been too often with the dead, 
I have not for a moment been unmindful of the liv- 
ing. If in the course of these long years I have 
parted with many collaborators, Providence has been 
kind to me in supplying others ; so that the succes- 
sion of good offices and friendly encouragement has 
never been quite broken. If at some future time, 



A LAST '' TRIBUNE'' RECOLLECTION. 211 

when I have penned my last copy, and have left the 
" drudgery of the desk's hard wood " forever, some- 
body should think it worth while, in continuing the 
story, to mention so unimportant a person as myself, 
I beg him to say this of me, if he can say no more, — 
that I worked for a quarter of a century with men 
of many shades of character, engaged in a most irri- 
tating occupation, with hardly a quarrel ; and that I 
have, thanks to everybody's kindness, no reason to 
believe that the few last days remaining will be 
worse than the first. 



278 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS BILL. 

A Sensitive Statesman. — Dr. Nathan Lord and his 
School. — An Apology for Pro-Slavery Clergymen. — 
First Visit to Washington. —First Impressions of 
Slavery. — A Greek Letter Anniversary. — Augustus 
C^sAR Dodge. — Stephen A. Douglas. — Thomas D. 
Eliot. — Professor Henry. 

I HAD been writing about Washington all my 
life, sticking large pins into distinguished peo- 
ple who sometimes howled at the infliction in a 
somewhat undignified way, and sometimes — for 
which I respected them — took no notice of the sur- 
gical sorrow. I do not much like public men who 
whine. Here is a yellow letter which I have taken 
from its pigeon-hole, in which the writer, who was 
in his day a very distinguished man, and a senator 
of the United States, as well as a governor of one of 
them, assures me that he is much obliged to me for 
defending him, as I now see clearly that I had no right 
to do. He had made a mortal blunder at a critical 
time : he had not voted, in fact he was not in his 
place, when he should have been in his place and 
should have voted ; for, during his absence, one of 
the most momentous questions Avas put to which 
the Senate of the United States was ever called 



THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS DILL. 279 

upon to respond. He was so distinguished that I 
do not dare to mention his name. It was evident 
that he wrote in a most melancholy frame of mind. 
Why should he have thanked me, in rather an abject 
way, for merely doing what I supposed at the time 
was an act of simple justice ? He said that he had 
few friends left; that nobody spoke well of him, 
which was not precisely true ; that his health was 
far from good ; that he was absent from the Senate 
at the exigent moment for excellent reasons — sani- 
tary, I think they were ; and that — but never 
mind the rest ! Why should public men write such 
letters to gentlemen of the press? Why should 
God, in his infinite wisdom, have given them a 
spinal column if they are never to use it ? Politics 
at the time of which I am writing were in a much 
simpler state than at present. The great heart of 
the land was putting categorical questions to its 
servants ; there was but little need of asking them 
more than whether they were upon the side of Free- 
dom or Slavery. Ah ! what a beautiful issue that 
was ! What a chance there was for thrusting im- 
portant people into a corner ! Sometimes, when I 
am thinking to myself how neatly it was possible to 
pin the doughface and to throw the trimmer into a 
perfect stutter of explanations, I burst into a great 
guffaw, and find nothing in Rabelais, nothing in 
Swift, more amusing. It is all over; the country 
will have no such question again before it in my 
time ; men's souls are not tried in that way in every 



280 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

generation ; and even now I feel a sort of sympatKy 
for my friend, the senator of whom I have just 
spoken. When one wants to be President, as he 
did, it is so hard to act as if one were not demoral- 
ized by the feverish hunger; though why anybody 
should want to be President is more, very much 
more, than I know. Are there not other ways of 
getting our names indelibl}^ inscribed upon the ledg- 
ers of Fame ? And even if they should not be in- 
scribed there, what matter ? 

I went to Washington in 1855 upon the business 
of the Muse. There was a highly respectable Greek 
letter society called the " The Delta-Kappa-Epsilon," 
which, in arranging for its annual meeting in that 
city, was imprudent enough to ask me to deliver a 
poem before it ; and this invitation I also was im- 
prudent enough to accept. I never could under- 
stand why the boys sent for me. I do understand 
why, some years after, the Dartmouth College young 
gentlemen, while the land w^as shaken by civil war, 
asked me to perform for them the same metrical 
service ; for I had written divers sharp things about 
their pro-slavery president. Dr. Lord; and these 
college lads — it is no credit to them — always like 
to have evil spoken of their dignitaries. It was to 
me a most pleasant occasion. It would have been 
so if it had brought me only the satisfaction of list- 
ening to the oration which was delivered by Mr. 
George William Curtis. This was the second time 
in which I had followed him with a poem — the 



THE DA YS OF THE KANSAS BILL. 281 

other being when I read some verses before the 
Mercantile Library Association in Boston. But I 
deviate still from my straightforward way for the 
sake of mentioning the entire kindness and old- 
fashioned courtesy with which I was received by 
Dr. Nathan Lord, the president of the college, and 
by his charming family. Nothing has astonished 
me more, in my newspaper career, than the facility 
with which men foroive the caustic thing^s wliich 
newspapers print of them. Dr. Lord had no sort of 
scruple about saying that he believed human slavery 
to be a divine institution. He published a pam- 
phlet in which he adopted the Socratic method, and 
asked the philanthropists a great number of hard ques- 
tions. Whoever supposes that they were easy to an- 
swer upon the side of emancipation has probably never 
read this tough little brochure. When your logic is 
in your heart, and when your love of humanity is 
bound and hampered and limited by constitutional 
obligations, the Dr. Lords, with their teasing little 
interrogatories, always have you at a disadvantage. 
I do not mind saying that, of all the doctors of 
divinity by me encountered in that memorable 
struggle, this doctor was the least easily handled. 
So, thinking all fair in war, I had recourse to ridi- 
cule ; and, in the light tilting, it is not saying much 
to aver that I, who knew less tlian the doctor had 
forgotten, had somewhat the best of tlie battle. It 
is so easy to make havoc of a most respectable per-, 
son's choicest respectabilities. And when the doc- 



282 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

tor, beaming mildly througli Lis spectatcles, treated 
me as if I had not an hour before been rib-roasting 
him (as I thought) in the most withering deca- 
syllabics, I began to suspect that he was of a 
peculiarly forgiving disposition, unless, indeed, I 
was a very feeble satirist. It is a pleasure to me to 
pay this tribute to a clergyman of the old school, 
who was strong and solid and consistent in his 
error, and who could do something more than 
gabble over and over again the misused formula, 
" Cursed be Canaan," or the apology for the " sum 
of all villanies," that it made its victims happy and 
religious. The best way to handle a bull is to take 
him by the horns. Dr. Lord was all wrong, but he 
was manfully wrong. Liberals may say what they 
please about the old orthodox theology, but at any 
rate it made men speak their mind, and gave them 
a mind to speak. 

I have lately been looking over a new book, writ- 
ten by my friend, Mr. Oliver Johnson, a valuable 
work, about Mr. Garrison and his Times. Mr. 
Johnson undoubtedly does show, that, during the 
long crusade against slavery, a great many clergy- 
men gave evidence that they were at least mistaken 
in their views of the abolition aoitation. But I 
confess, that, as I get older, I am inclined to be more 
and more charitable. I think now that I did not 
myself sufficiently take into consideration the pecu- 
. liar position of many ministers of the gospel during 
that momentous struggle. To a man who thought 



THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS. BILL. 283 

the cliiirch of no importance, — considered as a mere 
human organization, — the way was easy. To a 
controversialist with simply humanitarian views of 
Christianity, it made no difference whether these 
great ecclesiastical bodies maintained their exist- 
ence or not. But Presbyterians, Congregationalists, 
Methodists, Episcopalians, even Unitarians, had 
special ideas of the process by which souls were to 
be regenerated, and of tlie machinery by which the 
world was to be Christianized. It was not much 
for a man like myself, attached to no church, and 
with no religion to speak of, to sharply criticise, for 
instance, the Kev. Dr. Adams or the Eev. Dr. Lord. 
I have not so much charity for Mr. Eufus Choate, 
Dr. Adams's most distinguished parishioner. The 
eloquent lawyer had no congregation to conserve, 
and no sacred professional bias. A great many 
clergymen think religious matters to be things quite 
apart from politics and public affairs ; and perhaps 
I should if I were a doctor of divinity, as I certainly 
am not. It is hard to say exactly what I mean 
without appearing to surrender opinions which I 
have never dreamed of abandoning ; but, as history 
should be written with scrupulous exactness, I want 
the future chronicler of the great controversy to 
remember that it was the church members some- 
what more than the church pastors who were to 
blame. The former at least knew better. I am not 
sure that the pastors always did. I reached honestly 
this conclusion once while talking with the Eev. 



284 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Dr. , of Boston. He was an excellent speci- 
men of his class. He came into my office, and was 
so friendly and brotherly, and withal exhibited such 
a natural incapacity for grasping the situation, that 
all my wrath vanished, and I was really sorry for 
some perfectly true things which I had said of one 
of his most conservative Thanksgiving sermons. 
The chief blunder was in assuming that the pulpit 
had nothing to do with slavery. It was a sad mis- 
take if only considered logically. But let us forgive 
if we cannot forget ! It is not an agreeable subject, 
and we will travel back from New Hampshire to 
Washington as fast as possible. 

I had thought and read and talked and written 
so much about slavery, that, as we rode into the 
region of human bondage, I was quite upon the qui 
vwe to discover indications of its existence and 
influence. The first exhibition which I had of it 
was at a station in Delaware, upon the steps of 
which seven or eight veritable chattels were sitting, 
all rags and laziness, intensifying the delight of 
doing nothing else by masticating tobacco. Soon 
afterwards I saw another of my sable friends, in 
whose behalf I had worn out many pens and 
spoiled much paper, coming out of a wood, seated 
upon the back of the single ox which drew his 
cart. But I did not fully comprehend the laziness 
and the utter shiftlessness of the patriarchal system 
until I got into my hotel in Washington, and wanted 
a fire. I am afraid to say how many children of 



THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS BILL. 285 

Canaan struggled and labored and fetched and 
carried before we arrived at a comfortable combus- 
tion. First, one bondman came up and cleared out 
the grate ; then another brought the necessary kind- 
ling-wood, but forgot the shavings ; then arrived the 
coal in charge of a third assistant ; and then a bond- 
woman appeared and made the fire. It did not 
seem to me that one of these co-laborers had tke least 
idea of what he or she was doing. A sharp New 
York porter would Tiave had the fire blazing beauti- 
fully in five minutes, and the room too hot for endu- 
rance in ten. I made a memorandum in my diary 
that the only cruelty which I had observed in Wash- 
ington was that which I had myself experienced ; and 
I took good care not to let the fire go out during my 
stay, having a decided apprehension that once ex- 
tinguished it would be found utterly impossible to 
rekindle it. 

We had the exercises before the Delta-Kappa- 
Epsi-lonians the next evening, and I have a vague 
recollection of being seized by the right arm as if I 
had been blind, like Homer, and so led helplessly 
forward by the Honorable Augustus Caesar Dodge, 
who was only a senator notwithstanding his imperial 
name. He introduced me to the audience, which I 
was told included a good many members of Congress. 
I learned this afterward. I was kindly spared the 
depressing information beforehand. Otherwise, 
Heaven only knows how I should have got on. 
The boys kicked up a great dust in applauding my 



286 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

verses ; but what I liked most was that the Massa- 
chusetts members who were present made it a point 
of local honor and State esiprit to be perfectly de- 
lighted and to roar with laughter at all the principal 
funny passages. Those were days in which we were 
just beginning to feel that we were somebody and 
could produce men as well as ice and granite. One 
of our* members particularly distinguished himself 
by his obstreperous hilarity and afterward, when 
there was a " reception " at the hotel, he continued 
to break out at intervals and in an unexpected way, 
besides going about and telling everyone who was 
not present how much they had missed. The ban- 
quet came afterwards. 

It was at this festive board that I first saw a man 
pretty well-known and much talked of in his day. 
This was the Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, a son 
of New England, a veritable product of the Green 
Mountain State, at least in his pluck, persistency 
and muscular self-assurance and self-assertion. I 
did not like him, and I regarded his whole political 
system, so far as it related to slavery, with absolute 
detestation. This, however, shall not prevent me 
from saying that, of all the men in Washington, he 
most impressed me with a sense of power and of a 
rare and reserved force, Nobody who did not see 
him can comprehend the aptness of that title of 
" Little Giant " which was bestowed upon him ; but 
they may be assured that it describes him exactly. 
It would be hard and unjust to say that his manner 



THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS BILL. 287 

was arrogant and domineering ; it was rather that 
of a man who had carefully thought out his opinion, 
knew precisely what it was, and stood prepared to 
defend it against all comers. He championed bad 
measures with such indomitable ability that in 
listening to him the feeling was predominant of 
poignant regret that he was not upon the right side. 
It is useless to speculate now about it ; but I cannot 
help thinking of what infinite value this remarkable 
man might have been to the cause of liberty, if the 
fortune of politics had made him a leader of it. 
What a magnificent battle he fought in the senate 
for a most mischievous measure is well known; 
how he succeeded for a time in turning the policy 
of the Government from the normal to the noxious, 
it would be superfluous to narrate ; and how, after 
all, the spirit of the century and the power of eter- 
nal truth and justice were too much for this doughty 
but disappointed soldier of slavery. He was like a 
game-cock. Upon any allusion which he did not 
like, he was ready for the affray. I saw something 
of this at our supper. Mr. Eliot, a member of the 
House from Massachusetts, was one of our speakers, 
and being an antislavery man through and through, 
with views of the Kansas-ISTebraska bill which were 
quite unmistakable, made some reference to it which 
was, of course, perfectly good-natured, but quite 
enough to provoke a strong retort from Mr. Douglas. 
This also was tempered, I admit, by the proprieties 
of the occasion, but it was couched in very decided 



288 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

language and laid down with the air of one unaccus- 
tomed to positive contradiction. The "Little Giant" 
seemed to say to the representative, "Ah ! my friend, 
if I only had you in my own stronghold, the Senate 
Chamber, would n't I crunch you ! " Not that Mr. 
Eliot was in the least dismayed ; the man who used 
to bring in bills at all decent intervals for the repeal 
of the Fugitive Slave Law was not likely to be 
frightened even by the Giant's " Fee-faw-fum " ; 
this small passage-at-arms came to a pacific con- 
clusion ; and the feast went on until the larger of 
the small hours, with much singing of college songs, 
and many ebullitions of college wit, until it was 
quite fit and proper that everybody should go to 
bed. 

I do not know that the character of Congress, in 
its superficial aspects, has much changed since the 
time of which I am writing. Accustomed to the 
perfect decorum and methodical ways of smaller 
legislative bodies, I did not relish either the airs or 
manners of the House which was too large then for 
dignity, whatever it may now be. After a little 
while I was glad to go into the serener atmosphere 
of the Smithsonian Institute and to present to Pro- 
fessor Henry a letter of introduction with which I had 
been favored. In conversation with that learned 
and amiable man, during which he was good enough 
to consider my scientific ignorance, and to talk about 
things which I could a little understand, I forgot 
the turmoil and restlessness of the National Legis- 



THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS BILL. 289 

latiire, as well as the peculiarities of a city which 
had not then attained its present height of elegance 
and refinement. Soon I was glad to set my face to 
the North, to return to my daily toil, and to say what 
I thouglit, uninfluenced by lobbies, and breathing 
an air somewhat less contaminated by ambition and 
intrigue. There was a fierce party spirit then, which 
has since much abated ; and whether we have grown 
better or only more indifferent I shall not stop to 
consider. How many who were tlien full of life 
and energy have departed ! How many who were 
then famous have been forgotten 1 The great man 
in the White House, the great man in the Senate, 
many great men in the House of Eepresentatives 
have ceased to be great, or have ceased to be at all. 
Yet this republic still lives by sheer force of its 
innate political virtue, which neither partisan nor 
civil war has been able to destroy. May it live for- 
ever ! 

These are remarkable years which we have so 
cursorily considered : how the historical student of 
tlie future may regard them, it is, perhaps, useless, 
as it would be unprofitable, to conjecture. Yet with 
the knowledge which I possess of ancient times, I 
see nothing in their trials and turmoils and troubles, 
in the rise and the decadence of their empires and 
republics, with so thorough a savor of progress 
stimulated and set forward by the highest morality. 
We must go to the age of Calvin and of Luther for 
anything like it. I think that if the question of the 

19 



290 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

abolition of slavery had been merely a political 
one, the bondmen and bondwomen might to-day be 
grinding in the mills of their oppressors. It is hard 
even now to comprehend that slavery was a social 
blunder. The Slave States enjoyeda reasonable degree 
of prosperity, tlieir monopoly of a single commodity 
was eminently in their favor; an aristocratic class had 
been established to whom the exemption from com- 
mercial vicissitudes; the freedom from the anxiety 
of daily toil, and ample leisure for the cultivation 
of the graces of life had invested with a certain 
hereditary urbanity of manner, and a carelessness 
of material matters akin to generosity. Six centu- 
ries ago the relation of master and slave might have 
been perpetuated with many features to admire and 
with peculiarities at once engaging and beneficent. 
I suppose that it must be admitted that many of the 
slave-owners were really patriarchal in their manage- 
ment of this estate of human beings wdiich they had 
inherited ; but there was undoubtedly cruelty, op- 
pression, and wretchedness. The institution de- 
veloped passions and cupidities which were doubtless 
distasteful to the well-bred gentlemen of South 
Carolina. Ease of life led to imprudent expendi- 
ture. The family idea of slavery was continually 
disturbed by death, and by the change of prop- 
erty which it involved. Still, matters might have 
Struggled on for another century, without catas- 
trophe, if the Slave States had not been integral 
portions of the Federal Union, theoretically com- 



THE DAYS OF THE KANSAS BILL. 291 

mitted to the doctrines of democracy, and under 
the daily necessity of listening to contemptuous 
comments upon the wide discrepancy between their 
profession and practice. It would have been very 
different if the South had not taken refuge in the 
expedient of extension, if the North had been 
without a moral riglit to protest. The fatal error of 
the slaveholders was their failure to keep within 
their own limits, from which, indeed, they might have 
defied all the agitation possible. If they had yielded 
just a little, they would have been in an impregnable 
situation. But they forgot the wisdom of the in- 
junction, Quieta non 7novere, with results which 
deposed them from the proudest of social positions 
and reduced them to beggary. 



292 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 
CHAPTEE XXII. 

OLD TIMES AND TEAITS. 

New York half a Century since. — An Old New England 
Town. — My First Tragedy. — Social Characteristics. — 
Stage Coach Travelling. — Ancient Amusements. — A 
Fine Old Lady. 

FIFTY years do not seem to be much, especially 
when one has lived them, and has no like term 
of life before him. It has been my fortune to exist 
during a time in which there have been astonishing 
changes ; indeed, upon a little cursory reflection, I 
have been unable to fix upon any other half-century 
in which there have been so many. This comes 
partly, I may say mostly, of material discoveries and 
inventions. Even where these were then already 
under practical experiment, there have been such 
improvements that the old seems almost childish 
and clumsy. I remember, for instance, about the 
year 1828, to have seen the old Chancellor Living- 
ston, the first of our palace-boats, come half sailing 
and half steaminoj into our harbor, her old-fashioned 
engine in full operation, while above it were mainsail 
and foresail and topsail, — in fact, a full ship-rig. 
She was the first great steamer which we had seen, 
and much she surprised and delighted us. We 
nearly dislocated our jaws with wonder and admir- 



OLD TIMES AND TRAITS. 293 

ation in looking at her, for we were very primitive, 
even at that late day, down in our little seaport of 
New Bedford. We had vessels enough, but nothing 
like that. We had ships and barks and brigs, 
scliooners and sloops and all manner of boats, but 
we had never seen a large steamer before. The 
Benjamin Franklin, the twin boat of the Chancellor i 
Livingston, came the next year, and again we had 
an excitement. I suppose that there are some New 
Yorkers left who remember Captain Coggeshall, of 
the Chancellor, and Captain Bunker, of the Frank- 
lin. The former was a New Bedford man, and the 
last, by his name, should liave come, either directly 
or through his ancestors, from Nantucket. We had 
close nautical relations with New York at that time. 
Several of the old Liverpool liners, among them the 
George Washington and the Patrick Henry, I think, 
were built by our own clever shipwrights ; and more 
than one of the masters of these celebrated ships 
were our townsmen. People who know something 
of the New York piers will recall the names of 
Crocker and Nye and Delano. The Griunell, in 
the old house of Fisli, Grinnell, & Co., was a New 
Bedford man ; and the name of Howland, famous in 
the commercial annals of New York, is a New Bed- 
ford name, and so are the names of Hathaway and 
of Russell. 

1 have before me the manuscript diary of an old 
New Bedford merchant who visited New York in 
1823. He was a Quaker, but Quakerism just then, 



294 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

while the fierce fights of the Ortliodox and the Hick- 
sites were raging, sat very loosely upon some shoul- 
ders; and I am not surprised to find our friend 
recording how he went to the Park Theatre to see 
Charles Matthews in '' Mons. Tonson." He notices, 
what I do not exactly understand, that " the glass 
curtain of the theatre had a fine effect in dancins;.'* 
The next night he went to the theatre again, and 
notes the dolefully thin house, — " only eleven per- 
sons in the boxes when the first act was performed." 
He saw something which was not so pleasant. This 
was the treadmill, "which was in full operation." 
There were thirty persons on the wheel at a time, 
and as many more seated.*- Every half minute a bell 
rang by machinery. Then one came off and another 
took his place. Our friend was fortunate in filling 
the old ship which he had brought round with him 
with freight for Hamburg, and notes that John 
Jacob Astor was the principal shipper. Among the 
curious things which the visitor saw was the debark- 
ation of Prince Murat, who arrived from Hamburc^. 
Mustaches were then unknown, and the unshaven 
appearance of his Highness gave him rather a savage 
look. Soap and razors in those days were the abso- 
lutely necessary moral concomitants of civilization. 
Indeed, I do not know any change of a minor kind 
more marked than that which has occurred in re- 
spect of beards. The first mustaches which I ever 
saw were those of a small troupe of Spanish singers 
who came to give a concert in our village in the 



OLD T/MES A. YD TRAITS. 295 

year 1827. We advanced to common sense in this 
matter by degrees ; and long after the old gentle- 
men were reconciled to the beard upon the chin, 
they protested stoutly against hair upon the upper 
lip. They entered into no consideration of Nature's 
reasons for placing it there ; they did not see that 
the absurdity was in shaving it off. They connected 
it with immorality and, Heaven knows wliy, with 
laxity of manners and of life. Once when I had de- 
livered a lecture upon " John Wesley," and delivered 
it from a pulpit, an old uncle seriously advised me 
to shave myself before I again ventured into that 
sanctified place. And so, after seeing various other 
sights, our diarist went in the steamboat to Newport, 
and " in a gig " home to his " native village," where 
he found sperm oil worth from thirty to forty cents 
a gallon. Those who have had occasion to buy it 
know what it has sold for at different periods since. 
It is easy to grow sentimental over the past ; to 
talk of the virtues of our forefathers, of their simple 
methods of life, and of how they kept the even tenor 
of their way. But I am honestly inclined to the 
opinion that " the good old times " exist only in the 
brooding imaginations of those who regret them. 
Making allowance for opportunity, I do not believe 
that men fifty years ago were any better than they 
are now, nor do I think that the dwellers in small 
towns were then any better than the inhabitants of 
large cities. I liave seen wonderful changes, and 
most of them have been improvements. I hardly 



296 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

think that the people fifty years ago were any more 
careful in their habits, thou^'h the cost of livinsr has 
undoubtedly been enhanced. It is possible to spend 
more money, but then there is more money to spend. 
A good many things, for instance, have been care- 
lessly said about the temperance reform and the 
matter of hard drinking. When a total abstinence 
orator is upon his legs, with none to contradict him 
or make him cautious, he is apt to declare that there 
is more wine-bibbing and spirit-selling now than 
ever. But I can remember when it was not a par- 
ticular disgrace to be drunk, and a score of tragedies 
which came of intemperance; when every country 
tavern was a grog-shop and was expected to be ; 
when there could be no harvesting, no house-raising, 
no fire, and no funeral, — not even the ordination 
of a minister of the gospel without some indulgence 
in alcoholic bibacity. Never shall I forget a horror 
which I experienced when I was but a little beggar 
of a boy. Going upon some errand, I saw a crowd 
gathered about the house of a neighbor, and was half 
frightened out of my small senses by being told that, 
in a drunken fit, he had killed himself with his razor. 
Some garrulous woman with cruel kindness gave 
me all the particulars, and filled my soul with dis- 
tress for weeks. She told me how the wretch got 
under the bed to do the deed, and, after he had done 
it, carefully deposited the razor between the bed and 
the bed-cord. So I had my first lesson in tragedy 
then and there upon that cold winter morning, and it 



OLD TIMES AND TRAITS. 297 

was not the frosty air alone which made me shake. 
Much of that same tragedy have I since perused in 
many books and seen in many theatres. I have 
wrestled with disquisitions upon terror and pity ; I 
have learned something of grim ^schylus, of sweet- 
mouthed Sophocles, and of Euripides philosophical 
even in his frenzies ; I have lieard the knocking in 
" ]\Iacbeth," and read what the astute De Quincey 
says of it so finely : but all these together have not 
filled me with such a sense of destiny and of human 
helplessness as came to me when I saw the pale 
faces of the bystanders and caught "the cry of 
women" within those humble walls. It was ill 
sleeping for me that night, and for many a night 
after ; and until I had a good deal outgrown my af- 
fright I did not grudge a pretty long detour rather 
than pass tliat house of woe. There were other 
dwellings in which strange things had been done, at 
which I gazed nervously ; but this particular spot 
I could not go by for years without a shudder, for 
there I had my first knowledge of self-slaughter. 

I sometimes divert myself by making an inven- 
tory of things which we have now which we did not 
have when I was a boy. There are many who re- 
member all about the clumsy, old-fashioned tinder- 
box, and who have scraped their knuckles piteously 
while imitating Prometheus, and striking the flint 
against the steel, until at last the tinder cauglit the 
divine spark. A better way was to bank up the 
wood fire at night, for we had wood fires then, and 



298 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

live coals enougli for kindling would be found in 
the morning. The wonted fire (see Gray) lived in 
the ashes. The first inventions for obtaining the 
desired flame were clumsy. There was the French 
fire-box, as it was called ; the matches in them it 
was necessary to dip in a little bottle of acid ; some- 
times they were inflamed by the process, but oftener, 
as I remember it, they were not. The friction match 
was at first very clumsy. The lucifers it was ne- 
cessary to pull briskly through folded sand-paper. At 
last came the match as we have it now, handy, cer- 
tain, and convenient. The improvement in pens 
was similarly slow. The good gray goose-quill was 
all we had at first. When our stern old pedagogue 
tried to teach us the art of making a pen, we 
blundered and cut our fingers, and some of us, my- 
self among the number, never mastered the mystery 
after all. The first metallic pens, which were of 
silver, were the very worst instruments of the kind 
which I ever saw. The first steel pens were not 
much better. There Avas a certain horrible "oblique 
pen," as it was called, which did nothing but spatter 
and blot and catch in the paper, and do everything 
which a pen should not do. Metallic pens Avere 
then sold in little cases containing half a dozen, and 
cost ten or fifteen cents apiece. 

In housekeeping, also, there have been innumera- 
ble changes. Alas ! we had firesides then, around 
which we cosily gathered to watch dreamily the 
consumption of the well-seasoned oak-wood, and to 



OLD TIMES AND TRAITS. 299 

indulge in social converse. Possibly people may 
enjoy tliemselves now quite as well huddled about a 
register ; I have no doubt of the fact that their backs 
are warmer, for our backs, I am sorry to say, were 
often cold while our faces were aflame : but to sit 
there and chat and dream while the firelight flick- 
ered upon the ceiling and in the mirror, and made 
the great brass andirons two separate and distinct 
glories ; to read by that light, with our young eyes, 
some fairy tale, or to con the lesson of the next day ; 
to see in the glowing log castles and caverns, giants 
and fairies, and even excellent maps of the United 
States ; to repeat verses which maternal taste and 
tenderness took care should be good ones, — how 
charming it all seems to me now ! How we dreaded 
the stroke of nine, which sent us off to our cold 
beds ! But we needed a plenty of sleep, and we got 
it, though during the winter months breakfast was 
eaten by candle-light. Dinner was at noon, and 
even that was two hours later than Queen Elizabeth 
ate hers. Tea at five concluded the eating for the 
day, unless there were nuts and apples in the course 
of the evening. It was all a simple, but it was a 
happy life, — much happier than any which I antici- 
pate in the days which remain to me. It is quite as 
pleasant and as profitable to dream a boy's dreams 
through a long winter evening as it is to attend what 
are called "receptions," at which a great many women 
and men either talk of what they do not understand 
or of what I do not understand ; or sing songs which, 



300 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

whatever the key, make me sad ; or play musical 
puzzles upon the pianoforte ; and absurdly bid you 
" good night " at one o'clock in the morning, without 
caring half a penny whether yoti live or make an 
end of your part of all the tomfooleries of the world 
before sunrise. 

It is something to have lived and to have travelled 
before the invention of the railway. Journeying 
Avas indeed journeying then ; for, if the distance to be 
accomplished was at all considerable, a whole day 
was required. Boston was sixty miles from us : we 
started in the great heavy coach at daylight in the 
summer, and before daylight in the winter, a mes- 
senger being sent round the town to wake up the 
passengers. The coach was a heavy lumbering affair, 
not at all like the pretty amateur vehicle which I 
sometimes see in the New York streets ; but the 
horses were good ones and were often changed, and 
the coachman (we really called him the driver), 
though not exactly a Tony Weller, was a nearer 
approach to that worthy person than it would now 
be easy to find in any part of the land. I remem- 
ber that this solid, heavy-coated man, with a pro- 
digious natural talent for managing horses, talked to 
them as if they were human beings, and if he was 
in the mood, and you were on the box, he could talk 
to you — about them. I do not think that he cared 
at all for any forms of animated nature except the 
equine, and the human in the shape of passengers. 
He had a way of confiding to you his estimate of the 



OLD TIMES AND TRAITS. 301 

moral character of liis steeds, and of letting you 
know that this wheel-horse was vicious, and that 
leader lazy, — an opinion of which the leader was 
instantly reminded by a skilful flick of the whip. 
Upon my first journey to Boston, as I was to be 
alone and was yet little, I was particularly confided 
to his care. He therefore took me up on the box 
with him, and I had an excellent view of the sur- 
rounding country. What a delicious day it was ! 
How we bowled merrily along through the green 
meadows and under the bluest of skies, past the farm- 
houses nestled in the orchards which were great 
clouds of white blossoms ! Now we dashed through 
a quiet village, which was too sleepy to take even a 
lazy look at us ; then our way for a time would be 
under the grateful shade of the woods; then by 
river or little inland lake ; and, as we rushed up to 
the stables which were stations for changing horses, 
the grooms would be out in a moment with the fresh 
team, and so we were on again. When we stopped 
for dinner at the roadside inn, and ate of the plain, 
substantial fare which was set before us, we thought 
it all ambrosia and nectar. I have partaken of the 
triumphs of famous cooks since, but they seem to me 
like dry and sauceless chips in comparison. This 
was indeed pleasant travelling. If I had not regis- 
tered a vow to growl no more in these papers, I 
might say something sharply of our modern rail- 
way whirling through a fine country which we 
cannot view, and to our utterly prosaic way of ac- 



302 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

complishing distances. Now, if one wishes to see 
anything, he must go either on foot or on horseback. 
But we save time, and time is money ; and money 
is a thing for which I have an inexpressibly pro- 
found veneration. So I say no more. However ve- 
hement in our motions, we shall sometime all be still 
enough. 

o 

For all that we got in the way of public shows, 
our village life would have been dull indeed. Amuse- 
ment-lovers, who cannot live without going to see 
or to hear some new thing, little know with what a 
modicum of diversion honest folk can contrive to 
live. Now and then a wandering circus, or a me- 
nagerie of proportions which the enterprising Ear- 
num would have scorned, paid us a visit. To the 
circus I could not go, because of certain prejudices, 
of Quaker origin, still entertained in our house ; but 
all the horse-riders then were wont to pass through 
the streets in full costume, and I looked wonder- 
ingly at them in their faded finery, as they cantered 
along upon their Arabian or Hanoverian steeds to 
the sound of the trumpet. Perhaps I have never 
in my life longed for anything so much as I longed 
for a sight of the interior glories of that small tent 
which the manager called a pavilion. Menageries 
were not held to be immoral, and they were not 
large enough then to do much harm or much good 
either. Street shows we had, of a kind which are 
now so uncommon that I may venture to say a word 
of them. The street juggler, for instance, has he 



OLD TIMES AND TRAITS. 303 

become altogether obsolete ? He was clothed in a 
costume of no particular age, and of a fashion whicli 
may be properly described as fanciful. He spread a 
carpet upon the sidewalk and proceeded to business. 
He balanced pipes upon his nose ; he kept a dozen 
oranges simultaneously in the air; he swallowed a 
sword, to my juvenile horror, as I conjectured what 
medicine he took for its digestion ; he sent down 
after the sword a great quantity of tow, and then 
breathed fire and smoke from his mouth and nostrils. 
Then he carried round a hat, and as nobody put any- 
thing into it, he loudly declared himself utterly dis- 
gusted with the town, and expressed his intention of 
getting out of it as soon as possible. I suppose that 
he kept his word, for I saw nothing more of him. 
But there came in his place the most wonderful 
sight which ever made boys happy. The readers of 
Dickens will remember his amusing and graphic 
description of English showmen, particularly in " The 
Old Curiosity Shop "; but we have few of the genu- 
ine breed in this country. Dancing dogs are rare 
now, at least in the public streets ; but a wandering 
impressario brought to our town a canine company, 
— a most accomplisliecl troupe of dogs indeed. The 
orchestra of this establishment consisted of but one 
performer, but the name of that performer was le- 
gion. Unaided -and alone he made a prodigious 
amount of noise and jingle. He whistled upon the 
pandean pipes, which were somehow stuck in his 
greasy velvet waistcoat; he clashed the cymbals 



304 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

which were fastened to his elbows ; he managed a 
Turkisli chime of bells by jerking and wriggling and 
shrugging his shoulders ; and, having his hands yet 
free, beat sonorously upon the drum before him. 
All tliis time he kept his eye, which was a villanous 
one, upon his dogs and monkeys ; and I might add 
that they kept their eyes upon him. One dog 
turned a small spinning-wheel ; another waltzed as 
if waltzing for a wager ; another patiently bore upon 
his back the ugliest monkey of them all ; a fourth 
walked about with a tin cup, soliciting the pecuniary 
donations of the spectators. And all this time the 
master of the show maintained a musical racket, 
with his whistling and drumming and bell-ringing. 
It was delicious ; it was romantic ; it was fascinat- 
ing; it was unprecedented. All the school-boys 
were tardy that day, and were duly whipped, as they 
expected to be. I bore my own fustigation with 
somewhat less outcry than usual, and thought of 
dancing dogs instead of arithmetic and geography 
through the whole session. 

There was a good deal left in our town, in my 
boyhood, of old-fashioned manners and of old-timed 
courtesy, and many a relic of the old colonial days, 
when the distinction of classes was much wider 
than it now is. There were still many who pro- 
nounced the English language according to Walker, 
and said, " I am much oUecged to you " ; many who 
were not afraid of being considered proud, and 
thought more of their blood than of their property ; 



OLD TIMES AND TRAITS. 305 

wlio hung their arms upon the wall, — gules, fesse, 
crest and all; and who left in their wills curious 
little gold rings, fashioned in the form of a death's 
head, to be given to their bearers at the last. Years 
and years after, I saw one of these upon the finger 
of a pretty girl, who told me it had come to her 
from her great-grandfather, who received it at Squire 
W — 's funeral. There were fine old ladies then, 
who showed you with great pride the portraits of 
their ancestors painted by Copley, and in such lace 
and velvet and brocades as only Copley has ever 
jDainted. One of these ancient dames I well remem- 
ber, who, when I was taken into her presence by 
my mother, filled my childish soul with awe, — so 
stiff, so stately, so grandly mannered was slie, as 
she sat bolt upright in her great chair with no 
apparent pressure of her eighty years upon her. 
She fanned herself with the air of an empress. She 
presided at the tea-table, and poured out the bever- 
age with her old hands into cups which would set 
a collector of the present day wild. She made 
every guest her particular care, and asked everyone 
scrupulously if the tea was agreeable. She had 
the old way of pressing her visitors to take a little 
more of this or that, — a custom which had come 
down from the time when Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu carved for her father's guests, and recom- 
mended tid-bits to the Whig lords and squires. 
She was the embodiment of scrupulous decorum 
and civility, and I doubt if anything could have 
20 



306 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

betrayed her into tlie discourteous or rude. Whether 
such manners were worth preserving or not need 
not be here discussed. Everybody now is a lady or 
a gentleman. One must be particularly ill-bred 
not to be thought well-bred. Not to be attentive to 
the feelings of others, not to care what they think 
of 3^ou, not to reverence years, not to pay any special 
deference to women, not to know what is civil and 
what is the opposite, may be just as well. I do not 
profess to decide the point. I do not know. 

Nor do I know how many of my readers will 
care for this cursory record of old-time traits and 
far-away days. Each thinks the careless, sunny time 
which he calls his youth the best, and looks down 
to it sometimes through a mist of tears which only 
brings it nearer. We must bear with each other in 
those foibles. Fortunately for a reminiscent, men 
are naturally curious about the minutest matters of 
the past, and though exceedingly w^ell satisfied with 
themselves, are disposed to think favorably of their 
ancestors. It will be sufficient if I have pleasantly 
reminded my reader of his own. 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 307 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 

MORE NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 

Errors and their Correctors. — Private Sensitiveness. 
— The Man who wants to run for Congress. — Actors 
AND Actresses. — The Abominable Devices. — Feats of 
Extemporaneous Production. — A Great Critic and 
Journalist. ; 

I SUPPOSE that there are few things of which 
most men know so little as they know of the 
mannfacture of newspapers. It is the business of 
those who edit to furnish the world Avith reading ; 
it is the business of the world to find fault. I have 
sometimes wished tliat I could introduce these con- 
stant critics and censors to some better knowledi^e 
of the difficulties, anxieties, and perplexities of the 
journalist's vocation : it is possible that their hearts 
might be softened, their tongues stayed, and their 
querulous animosity subdued. As it is, most of 
mankind seem to stand guard over us, ready to 
pounce down upon us at the slightest aberration of 
memory, the smallest error of detail, the minutest 
possible mistake or misstatement of fact. They do 
not seem to understand that the most ardent desire of 
the honest journalist is to be right. Always he goes 
into detail with fear and trembling. Generally, no 
lawyer preparing for nisi ])rms or for terms takes 



308 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

more pains, or subjects himself more entirely to the 
diligence of research ; and yet, in spite of all this, 
the journalist sometimes finds that he has blundered 
into depths of error, and has been egregiously misled 
by what seemed to him to be authority. But 
whether that error be large or small, he is sure to 
be instantly informed of it. Somebody at once 
finds him out ; and just as surely as somebody finds 
him out, there comes a letter, airy wdth superior 
knowledge, or ferocious with a sense of personal in- 
jury, or fussy in its splitting of hairs. Alas ! we 
have so many critics, each of them mounted either 
■upon a hobby-horse or a charger of personal injury ! 
Every human being, in my opinion, is pleased to 
detect any other human being in a mistake. To do 
so proves his sagacity, knowledge, discrimination, 
virtue, and morality. I had excellent evidence of 
this while these papers were in the course of their 
first publication. Scores of obliging persons were 
good enough to correct me. I frankly acknowledge 
that it was my own memory that was occasionally 
in the wrong, but quite as often I have been right. 
It is hardly worth mentioning ; but surely it is not 
always the fagged and overworked journalist who 
blunders. For the newspaper man who deliberately 
publishes to the world a falsehood, or even does so 
through inexcusable carelessness, I have no respect, 
and could hardly have much affection. But be- 
tween honest error and falsehood there is a wide 
moral difference. 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 309 

My own experience of the sensitiveness of man- 
kind has been a long one. I was threatened with 
personal chastisement before I was out of my nonage 
by an irascible person who, when I criticised his 
political party, thought that I meant him. Although 
I had not. Heaven help me ! a spare penny in my 
pocket, there \vas a furious old gentleman who was 
scarcely restrained by his more prudent lawyer from 
bringing an action against me for libel. To this 
day I have never understood how he expected to 
collect the damages which he might recover. A 
country editor, as I was then, lives in an atmosphere 
of botherations. Everybody wants to use his sheet 
for the jDurpose of advertising gratis either his goods 
and chattels or his opinions. He wishes the small- 
est details of his own personal experience to be put 
upon record, from the birth of his first child to the 
raising of his last overgrown pumpkin. School- 
girls send poetry which it is impossible to print, and 
tell the unhappy recipient that they are themselves 
unhappy ; that they have yearnings ; and that their 
yearnings will be to a limited extent allayed by the 
appearance of the enclosed stanzas in the Poets' 
Corner of " your valuable newspaper." Sometimes, 
in my salad days, I used to buck- wash their poetry, 
correcting it something as Voltaire did that of Fred- 
erick the Great ; whereupon " Ella " or " Minnie " 
would write to me in great wrath, and unmistakably 
say that they had nothing to thank me for, — and 
perhaps the pretty creatures were right. The worst 



310 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

condition of a journalist is that into which he falls 
when everybody knows him; when any aggrieved 
person can walk straight up to his desk and take 
him to task summarily; when all the subscribers 
remember who his grandmother was, and can retal- 
iate by defiling the grave of his grandfather. There 
is no man for whom I entertain a profounder sym- 
pathy than for the country editor and publisher, — 
usually they are one, — who would make a ridicu- 
lous failure of it if he attempted to shelter himself 
under an incognito ; whose outgoings and incomings 
are known of all his neighbors ; who can hear him- 
self brought to judgment if only he steps into a 
shop. Often he has not the tolerable consolation 
of prosperity. He works hard for a mere pittance. 
People who owe him money think, for some inscrut- 
able reason, that he is the last man to be paid. The 
expenses of the establishment are not great, but on 
the other hand, the income is painfully small. He 
hardly ever experiences the joy of making both ends 
meet, and much less the supreme felicity of seeing 
them lap over. Yet the toil must go on, and of the 
trouble there is no end. Such are the pains of ru- 
ral journalism, and indeed of journalism in places 
which would feel publicly aggrieved if they should 
be designated as rural. 

There is a journalism in some cities counting their 
inhabitants by many tliousands, which is hardly 
more delightful. There are several classes of people 
who seem to think that newspapers are printed en- 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES, 311 

tirely for tlieir benefit and behoof. Among these 
are actors, politicians, and the writers of small books, 
together with all men who have bees in their bon- 
nets ; who mistakenly think that they have invented 
something, when they have merely reproduced some 
dusty and w^orthless model in the Patent Office ; 
who, feeling all up and down their spinal columns 
that the world is all wrong, are thoroughly sure 
that they were born to set it right ; who are always 
in labor, like the mountain, and desire a puff for the 
mouse before he makes his appearance. Foremost 
among these is the man who wants to run for Con- 
gress, and who yearns for the glory of the candidacy, 
albeit he has not the ghost of a chance of being re- 
turned. Many unhappy mortals afflicted by this 
mania have I seen in my time, and I hereby delib- 
erately declare them to be the most stupendous 
bores upon record. I have known at least half a 
hundred affected by this disease, and perhaps two 
of them have succeeded in their heart's desire. I 
know the symptoms of this malady as well as a 
doctor knows those of the whooping-cough. I have 
seen a number of patients afflicted by it even in 
cities, though I believe that' it is less manageable 
in the country. The man who wants to run for 
Congress begins by cultivating the friendship of 
the newspapers. If he makes a speech in any 
little meeting, he brings it written fairly out and 
quite ready for the compositor. He calls frequently 
upon the unfortunate journalist, and he stays a great 



312 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

deal longer than he is welcome. He dribbles his 
" views " into unwilling ears, and pothers away at a 
great rate, until you wish that the gods would sud- 
denly strike him dumb — or dead ! He subscribes 
his money — if he has any or can borrow any — for 
everything, — the orphans' home, the public library, 
the temperance society, the church itself; all are 
gladdened and enriched by his donations. Usually 
in Massachusetts he was deeply if not furiously of 
antislavery opinion ; totally abstinent he also was 
— theoretically. Whatever he was doing or saying, 
in his uprisings and down- sittings, in his eating and 
his drinking, in his pleasure and his business, his 
eye saw far away the swelling proportions of the 
Capitoline dome. Such were some of the symptoms 
of this curious disease, which I have known to take 
entire possession of the w^hole constitution of an 
otherwise healthy man, and quite spoil him, if not 
for life, at least for many years. The monomaniac 
often bored me; but if any one should recognize 
the portrait, let him rest assured of my entire for- 
giveness. He really had the worst of it, whether 
he got to Congress or not. 

Anong those who think that newspapers are spe- 
cially printed for their use are the amusement-mon- 
gers. The whole bad business of puffery was upon a 
much lower basis not a great many years ago ; and the 
manager of a theatre, for the consideration of a free 
admission, thought himself entitled to the occupation 
of as many columns as he cared to fill. Actors I have 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 313 

always found a particularly sensitive class. When 
their performances were not extolled to the zenith, 
they were given to the display of much bad temper. 
You must not only praise them profusely, but you 
must praise tlieir wives and children, if they chanced 
also to be upon the boards. As I did not write the 
notices of these " artists," I did not see why I should 
be bothered about them ; but bothered I was, and 
often sorely. One morning there walked into the 
Atlas office in Boston a gentleman of large pro- 
portions and of even more than Eoman dignity. He 
had in his hand a cane, wliich I thought vibrated in 
an ominous manner; and all doubt was removed 
when, in his most rotund vein of tragic elocution, he 
expressed the intention of chastising me. I was 
as innocent as an unborn babe of any wrong which 
I had done him, except that of listening sometimes 
to his loudest speeches in rather a listless way, and 
of denying him a meed of tears, even when he 
personated " The Stranger," — a part which, in the 
most incompetent hands, usually makes the pit cry 
profusely. I found out immediately that my foe 
was a certain Mr. P. of the Boston Theatre, and I 
further found out that my theatrical critic had said 
something about Mr. P.'s wife, she also being upon 
that stage. Now, the critic aforesaid was a perfectly 
well-bred gentleman, an Oxford man ; and I could 
not believe that one wlio had taken a double first, 
and knew all about Euripides and ^schylus, could 
be guilty of any impropriety in speaking of a lady. 



314 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

It turned out that he had said nothing of her acting, 
either good or bad, but something about her dress, 
which he thought inappropriate. I gave this fierce 
Thespian to understand that he was indulging in 
too much noise about a small matter, and that he 
had better make his exit at once. I suppose he 
thought so too, for he left with an air of consummate 
dignity. Manager Crummies couldn't have done 
it better. 

Sometimes I got a touch of nature in the letters 
which were sent from the theatre to my newspaper, 
which made me as soft and amiable as a child. 
Theatrical audiences, upon both sides of the ocean, 
know Mrs. John Wood. Mr. Barry brought her 
over from London when he opened the Boston The- 
atre, to act soubrettes and parts in which the dis- 
tinction of the sexes in respect of clothing is ignored. 
She danced clumsily and sang prettily ; but a woman 
fuller of a fine sense of humor I have never seen 
behind the footlights. She had a husband who did 
the low comic business, and did it badly. He 
thought that fun consisted in painting carbuncles 
on his nose, in that extravagant St. Vitus style of 
twitching the arms about which, I believe, passes 
for funny in England, and in being as much like a 
clown in a horse-riding as possible. Our critic no- 
ticed mildly but firmly these peculiarities of Mr. 
John Wood, and suggested that he was not, upon 
the whole, provocative of laughter, and hardly of a 
sickly smile. The letter which, upon the publication 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 315 

of these comments, was sent to me was an admi- 
rable evidence of the love of woman, which endureth 
almost to the end. Mrs. Wood informed me that 
Mr. Wood was acknowledged by English critics 
to be the superior of Buckstone ; that his reputation 
throughout the United Kingdom was of the first 
order ; and that I had better be careful how I al- 
lowed anybody to speak disrespectfully of him in 
my newspaper. The dear, bright little woman ! It 
was n't our fault if she got quite too much of him 
afterward, and was obliged to send him adrift. 

When Mademoiselle Eachel began her season in 
Boston, her manager demonstrated his ability in 
that capacity by sending to the press no tickets. 
We had all solemnly determined to take no notice 
of her whatever on the morning after her dehut ; but 
dear old Tom Barry, the lessee of the theatre, heard 
of the blunder, and sent down the tickets in sheaves. 
One little peculiarity of this engagement was that 
I wrote all the articles on Mademoiselle Eachel's 
acting in our newspaper without knowing a word 
of French. I looked these marvels of criticism over 
lately, and was much astonished at the superiority 
of my job-work. A really good journalist never be- 
trays his ignorance of anything. He carries the 
whole encyclopaedia, so to speak, in his vest-pocket. 
How did I do it ? Well, I did it much as Captain 
Shandon, in the debtors' prison, did the prospectus 
of the magazine, when he asked for Burton's Anat- 
omy of Melancholy, and wished to be left to his 



316 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

" abominable devices." Mr. Goodrich, the foreman 
of the office, whom I still remember gratefully as 
the best proof-reader this erroneous world ever saw, 
happened to know French well, and helped me 
kindly. I bought the translation of "Phedre," of 
" Adrienne," and the rest; I threw in all manner of 
profound and acute critical observations ; I followed 
the play carefully at the theatre, and I accomplished 
the work beautifully. We saved fifty dollars, which 
would have hired a really competent critic, and 
given our readers something which it might have 
been worth their while to read. They found no 
fault with my ingenious reports of the wonderful 
tragedieime in Boston. Why not ? Why, because, 
I suppose, they knew no more about the matter than 
I did. 

I have thoudit it worth while to give this illus- 
tration of what I count among the pains of journal- 
ism. I have given it, not that I would underrate 
the calling which has supplied me with bread all 
my life ; but because I would have the reader 
understand how hard we have to work, to what 
shifts we are exposed, and how we have a constant 
use for all the faculties which God has gifted us 
withal. The foremost pain of journalism is the 
egregious miscellaneousness of the work which is 
required. There must be perpetual alertness. There 
must be that accurate general knowledge which 
sends a man instantly to the right authority. There 
must be that self-suspicion, that distrust of memory, 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 317 

which sets one to searching ; to say nothing of that 
industry which knows no difference between night 
and day. Whoever undertakes to write for a news- 
paper needs what Napoleon called the courage of 
four o'clock in the morning. He must have a hand 
to grasp a subject with celerity ; to be able in 
twenty minutes to tear the heart out of it ; to fasten 
upon all the points at a glance ; to see their humor 
or their tragedy ; to understand their relation to the 
general drift of his own newspaper; and to write 
about them in English which will keep the break- 
faster for five minutes from his coffee and his rolls. 
Does anybody suppose that this is easy to do ? I 
say that it is hard to do, and do well; and I 
think I ought to know. Take a leading article, 
for instance. You may go the rounds of the uni- 
versities and the colleges, the churches, and all the 
places which men of culture frequent, and liow 
many men will you find who can write a leading 
article ? Outside of the newspaper offices, I venture 
to say, few indeed. There is no trouble in getting 
essays ; but well do I remember how Mr. Greeley 
used to condemn some of our articles as " too 
essayish." Learning is good ; accuracy is better ; 
grasp of the subject cannot be dispensed with ; or- 
tliodox grammar, so far as the English language has 
any grammar, is highly desirable : but more desir- 
able than all is the tact which enchains the reader, 
and makes him conclude that which he began. 
There must be a salient vivacity in the lines which 



318 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

prevents liim from seeing liow many of them there 
are, until he has finished them. 

The reason why so few men comparatively succeed 
in journalism is because so few have for it the tem- 
perament and the constitution. More than a moiety 
of mankind is slow, deficient in alacrity, and devoid 
of a sense of proportion. The art of putting things 
rapidly in shape is not well understood by the 
general. This is the reason why we have long- 
winded sermons, lectures promotive of somnolency, 
and magazine work which presupposes that longevity 
vouchsafed to the long-abiding gentlemen and ladies 
of the Old Testament. 

Every journalist of any ability recollects feats 
which he has accomplished, which it does not seem 
to him he could ever do again, — reaches of persis- 
tent labor, which stretched through all the daylight, 
and were continued after the evening gas was lighted, 
long after admonitions came to him that the press 
was waiting, and that the forms must be closed up 
immediately. Sometimes, by the evening fireside, 
I sit and dream of the great things which I once 
did, not in any spirit of self-sufficiency, but in 
my own humble way, as Swift dreamed, while the 
intellectual shadows were closing around him. 
" What a genius I had when I wrote that book ! " 
he used to say of the " Tale of a Tub." "Well, even 
little men, who have done their best, may look back 
upon their triumphs. I do, for one, and I should 
not be very civil to whomsoever should gainsay me. 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 319 

I remember liow once a great statesman died, and 
the wires sent us the melancholy intelligence at 
about three o'clock in the afternoon. I should like 
to know what most people capable of doing it at 
all w^ould have said if they had been called upon 
for a biography of that statesman, covering the 
whole period of his life, all his political history, 
with a decent estimate of what he had done, and of 
his talents and character, — all this to fill some six 
columns of "The Tribune," and all to be ready 
within nine hours ! I have not forgotten that 
" Obituary," nor how some people criticised it and 
found faults and errors in it, and how few under- 
stood the difficulties of the w^ork, or thought of the 
fagged and weary man who had done his best, and 
had not done it badly. Bless the breakfast-table 
critics, how^ sharp they were, and how knowing! 
Bless also the sagacious gentleman who had a month 
in which to consider the matter, to turn it over 
leisurely, to ransack the chambers of memory, and 
to take down book after book from the library 
shelves 1 He w^ould have finished it all charmingly 
in the daytime, alone in his study, but not quite 
so well at tw^o o'clock in the morning, with the 
night editor at his elbow and the night foreman 
howling through the speaking-tube. 

The public is not inconsiderate, it is only 
ignorant. The newspaper is a mystery of the 
manufacture of which it knows hardly anything. 
Those who give to it the enthusiasm of youth. 



320 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

the vigor of manhood, and whatever wisdom old 
age may have brought with it might have won an 
abiding fame in this department of literature or the 
other, in the fields of science, in the arena of public 
affairs. Taste or accident has betrayed them into a 
humble sjDhere of human exertion, nor do they 
quarrel with their fortune. He who drifts into 
journalism seldom leaves it ; he still plods on in the 
daily toil which for him has a rare fascination. 
Often there is no fame for him. The cleverest 
newspaper man may be utterly unknown, and not 
forgotten only because he has never been remem- 
bered. His ' heart, however, is stout at any rate ; 
and come competency or the lack of it, come the 
highest or the humblest position, he still toils with 
irrepressible cheerfulness, and hopes when all is 
over that his associates who survive him will be 
reasonably sorry or solemn at his funeral. 

Only yesterday a great many of us were gathered 
together to take our last look at a familiar face, and 
to see in cold obstruction a noble form which for so 
many years we had only known as full of activity 
and animation. We all listened, I am sure, with as 
much pleasure as was compatible with the occasion 
to the tender and admirable words which fell from 
tlie good clergyman, as he pronounced his large and 
catholic estimate of Dr. Eipley's religious nature. 
IS'othing could have more perfectly befitted the 
place and the time. If so incompetent a person as 
myself may, in this quite different place, offer to 



NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES. 321 

the dead man of letters, to the departed journalist, 
a stammering sentence or two of farewell^ — to the 
writer whom we all first respected and then rever- 
enced, an inadequate tribute, let me try to impart 
to those who read me some sense of the great work 
which Dr. Kipley had done for the American mind 
and for American culture, through the medium of 
the daily press. We write about politicians, — he 
wrote about sages and the immortal of the earth. 
We discuss things which to-morrow will be forgot- 
ten, — he spoke to an army of readers, of the books 
which they should read, and of the books which 
they sliould avoid. It is when I consider such 
accomplishment as his that I am proudest of my 
vocation. It was given to him — it is not given to 
most of us — to keep close to the great argument of 
human duty, informed and guided by elevated 
thouo'ht. The columns which knew him wdll know 
him no more forever ; but these thinkers who knew 
him as a mentor, only not infallible because human- 
ity is always fallible, will sadly miss his assistance, 
and will associate with fames which are wider and 
higher the name of one who was much else, but 
who was also a journalist. 



21 



322 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 

Training for Journalism. — The Office the Best School. 

— Wasted OproRTUNiTiES. — What a Real Newspaper 
IS. — The Old Editors. — The Rewards of Journalism. 

— Its Associations and Dignity. 

I SAID in my last chapter that men drift into 
journalism. I ought to have added that this 
is not so nearly true as it once was. Lads who 
have been liberally educated turn their backs oftener 
than was once common upon law, physic, and divin- 
ity, and seek employment which they hope to make 
permanent from some respectable public journal. I 
believe that they are rather astonished if they are 
not met by the editors with arms wide open, and 
invited at once to the higher seats and services of 
the sanctuary. A brisk young fellow may be much 
disappointed, and naturally a little mortified, to find 
that there is nothing for him but running after fires 
and reporting robberies ; that there is no market in 
tlie newspaper offices for his Greek, Latin, and 
mathematics ; and that he must go through a pretty 
stiff and prolonged apprenticeship before he can 
hope for promotion. If he be wise, he does as well 
as he can what is given him to do, exhibits all pos- 



NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 323 

sible industry, guards himself sedulously against 
bad habits of life, begins at once the study of public 
affairs, reads, whenever he can find opportunity, the 
best books, and so prepares himself for the higher 
business of his chosen profession. This matter of 
training for journalism has been often discussed, and 
in many respects the discussion has been profitable. 
I used to think that distinct and separate schools 
for educating young men to the vocation would be 
eminently useful. Years ago I wTote, as well as I 
could, an article, W' hich was printed in " The Inde- 
pendent" newspaper, suggesting such institutions. 
Nobody paid the least attention to it, and possibly 
it did not deserve any. I have so far modified my 
opinion that I now think the best school to be the 
newspaper office itself. Nothing so keeps men 
learning as the sharp spur of necessity. Nothing 
makes men thoughtful like a sense of responsibility. 
There is nothing like the discipline of being told 
plumply that you have done bad work, and that 
there will be no more work for you to do, if you 
cannot do it better. I want those brisk-minded 
lads, who have taken salutatories and valedictories, 
and college prizes without number, to comprehend 
that newspaper management is merciless, and not in 
the least a respecter of persons. I suppose that it 
was the sophomoric airs which these young fellows 
pleased to put on which made Mr. Bennett, who 
had a first-rate journalistic instinct, generally de- 
cline to give them employment. He used to say 



324 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

that it would take longer to train them than they 
would be worth after training. Mr. Greeley, who 
had a fine literary taste, and a warm respect for men 
of letters, was more considerate of their feelings, but 
he was not less a severe judge of their performance. 
He was very shy of too much writing, and no flux 
of words ever concealed from his sharp intellect 
poverty of thought. No article suited him which 
did not have a real purpose, and was not written in 
a way likely to promote it. 

I have said that the newspaper ofi&ce itself is 
the best school of journalism. This is probably the 
reason why, in past times, practical printers have 
sometimes made such good editors. They had mas- 
tered the economy of the whole business. They 
knew, while they were writing it, how a thing would 
look in type. Business brought them into constant 
association with men of all classes of society. The 
"art preservative of all arts," if acquired, was in 
itself a liberal education. Whatever happened in 
the world at large was brought directly to their 
notice, and was reproduced for the reader, partly 
through the medium of their own intelligence and 
skill. In stormy political times those who were 
fighting the battle could not do without the news- 
paper any more than they can now. The printer 
became an important person. He did not always, 
indeed, not often, develop into a famous public 
character ; but, if he did not wear a sword — the 
sign of a gentleman — by his side, as Guttenberg 



NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 325 

and Faust and the other early printers did, it was 
because everybody had given up such mark of social 
distinction. 

There are many things which it behooves a jour- 
nalist to know which can hardly be learned outside 
the office ; but there is much, not less needful, which 
may, and indeed must be, acquired beforehand. If 
there be any young gentleman, in college or else- 
where, who may read this, paper, and who intends 
to engage in the profession of which it treats, I 
would fain impress upon his mind the necessity of 
full and accurate knowledge, especially of American 
history. At nineteen, it is easy and pleasant to 
spend one's spare time in the desultory reading of 
novels, of poetry, of light and amusing essays ; it is 
not so pleasant afterward, when a man is thrown 
upon his ow^n resources, to find them wofully want- 
ing. I ought to speak knowingly — I am sure that 
I speak feelingly — upon this point; for, put to 
the confession, I should be obliged to say that all 
my life I have been trying, and trying in vain, to 
make up for lost chances. Only the other day I 
attended, for the first time in twenty years, a college 
Commencement. I happened to go into the room of 
a young gentleman, tlie place in which he is sup- 
posed to be preparing for the serious business of 
life. I w\as much astonished at the extreme scanti- 
ness of his library ; but to compensate for this bibli- 
ographical paucity he had, if I counted rightly, one 
pianoforte, two guitars, and a banjo ! It was a 



326 REMimSCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

pleasant nook, quiet, cloistered, and shady ; a good 
library was at hand ; there was excellent tuition and 
perfect leisure ; all the rational wants of life sup- 
plied, no carking cares to molest, no divided 
duties to distract, everything to make toil toler- 
able and study agreeable, — and yet my young 
friend did not seem to appreciate my remark when 
I said, " Ah 1 what would we old fellows give if we 
could now have four years of study in this pretty 
little room, without grim apprehension to molest us, 
and without a lurking sense of impending necessity 
to make us afraid 1 " I could not ask the musically- 
minded young gentleman if he was preparing for 
journalism, for that might have smelt of the shop ; 
but I felt certain, if he ever was enrolled in our 
office, that he would have a good deal to learn — 
and to unlearn. 

Life is a lottery, and failure in any undertaking 
is doubtless commoner than success. But the dif- 
ference between journalism and the other liberal 
professions is, that in the former a slow and stupid 
man is distanced from the first. A moderate 
clergyman finds a moderate congregation well enough 
pleased with his moderate sermons. There are the 
petty courts and the minor services of the office for 
the small lawyers. There are people who will be 
dosed and drenched by an empiric rather than not 
be physicked at all. But a quack, a bungler, an ig- 
noramus in journalism has hardly the spectre of a 
chance; and a newspaper which can employ only 



NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 327 

an incompetent editor wants no editor at all. It 
rubs along in a happy-go-lucky style, and does 
much better without original matter than it would 
probably do with a plentiful supply of it. A real 
newspaper, full to repletion of the very latest intel- 
ligence from all parts of the earth ; palpitating witli 
all that yesterday stimulated the world to action, or 
thrilled the heart of humanity at home or in distant 
lands ; telling the story of happiness or of misery 
everywhere ; speaking of that which will hereafter 
make millions comfortable or wretched ; discussing 
great questions of public policy upon which the fate 
of nations may depend ; saying to every man who 
may look into it precisely what he may want to 
know ; guiding the blind, instructing the ignorant, 
and helping the helpless ; denouncing wrong and 
outrage, falsehood and folly ; giving that informa- 
tion w^ithout which the most careful may plunge 
into quagmires or tumble over precipices ; assisting 
the possessor of thousands to become possessor of 
tens of thousands, or lifting the pauper to compe- 
tence, — such is that which has colored, shaped, and 
illustrated this nineteenth century — such is the 
newspaper ! 

This daily miracle is worked with such persistent 
uniformity that hackneyed observers have come to 
think of it as no miracle at all. Familiarity does 
not precisely breed contempt, but it much mitigates 
anything like profound veneration. It must be an 
easy matter, men say, else w]iy is it so well done ? 



328 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

I can answer the qnestion briefly. It is because 
clever men alone are employed in the work, and the 
stupid are dismissed from it the instant they are 
weighed and found wanting. How many times in 
a year a stern editor has to say " No ! " I could make 
a classification from my ow^n observation which 
would be as full of ghosts as Ossian, as dreary as 

's last elegy, as discouraging as destiny itself. 

What melancholy stuff has been brought to me to 
publish, with the suggestion that a small remunera- 
tion would not be unpalatable to the author, as if, 
small or large, it w^as ever unpalatable to anybody. 
There was the widow with two little children, whose 
verses it was hard to decline; there was the poor 
girl who wanted to achieve an education, but who 
also wanted newspaper employment before she had 
achieved it, as if education in that department of 
labor were quite unnecessary; there w^ere funny 
men, the most dismal of all, who promised me irre- 
pressible vivacity and genuine American humor, the 
only thing which my admirable columns lacked; there 
were dreary old gentlemen, who, having had losses, 
proposed to make them up by furnishing us w4th 
articles on finance — and very odd it was that these 
should always be upon finance ; there were experts 
bristling with specialties, dramatic, musical, legal, med- 
ical, meteorological, — and. Heaven help them 1 they 
all wanted to be editors or sub-editors or managing 
editors or assistant editors, or something of the 
kind. One mournful similarity I noticed: they 



NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 329 

were all egregiously huffed when their proposals 
were not eagerly and instantly accepted. Upon my 
word, I do not know any memories more doleful 
and dumpish than those which I have of this mourn- 
ful train of aspirants for the honors and emoluments 
of journalism. I could send the boys, and even the 
girls, about their business, if they had any, without 
much compunction ; but it was not so easy to dis- 
miss the old, the needy, the gray-haired, and those 
wlio had failed without any future. 

The highest prizes in the competitions of journal- 
ism are necessarily few : the neophyte may as well 
understand that his chances of becoming a great 
editor are not much better than that of his becoming 
President of the United States, or Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court. It is quite surprising to con- 
sider how few conductors of newspapers achieve 
wide reputation, or any fame which promises to be 
permanent. Not many of those who have made a 
noise, and been most successful in journalism in this 
country, are still remembered. Franklin himself has 
other monuments and a closer hold upon perennial 
fame than he acquired in the printing-house. In 
Boston, I believe, they remember no old editors ex- 
cept Ben Piussell, a hero of the Federal and Demo- 
cratic wars, Joseph T. Buckingham, who was honest 
and with a way of freeing his mind unmistakably 
in excellent English ; and may be Mr. Nathan Hale 
of "The Daily Advertiser." In New York a few 
ancient readers still speak of Webb and Stone, of 



330 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

King and Hale ; while Greeley and Bennett and 
Eaymond are the unforgotten ones of the profession. 
Of Washington editors, Gales and Seaton and the el- 
der Blair are remembered ; but who knows anything 
about Duff Green, very famous in his day ? News- 
papers now are numerous enough, but the very fact 
that they are so makes distinction all the more dif- 
ficult. My advice to my young friends intending 
journalism is to resolutely banish from their heads 
all nonsense about becoming celebrated. Let them 
be content with distinction in the office in which 
they are employed ! Let them be renowned within 
its walls for industry and for accuracy, for good copy 
and for dexterity, for alacrity and a cultivation of 
the amenities of life ! Those who like a wider ce- 
lebrity had better seek it in some other field. Let 
them run for Congress, or engage in a walking match 
or a starving match ! Let them make a heap of 
money, and leave it to a library or a hospital ! Let 
them appropriate a handsome amount of other peo- 
ple's cash, and run away to Europe ! Let them 
write books good enough to sell or bad enough to be 
good! There are a hundred ways to notoriety, 
w^hich some call fame, and even to genuine fame it- 
self ; but to most literary men who engage in jour- 
nalism it must, in addition to the money which they 
earn, be its own exceeding great reward. I^or is 
there any reason for complaint. The majority of 
mankind do no better, seldom indeed so well. 

The young men entering the profession must re- 



NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 331 

member that there are better things than "broad 
rumor," or " the glistering foil set off to the world." 
To have given innocent pleasure ; to have imparted 
valuable instruction ; to have helped others even in 
an humble way to think correctly and to act rightly ; 
to have done even a little in the work of abolishinix 
bad institutions and of creatine or strenothenins 
good ones, will bring consolation when the shadows 
of life lengthen in a westering sun, and the business 
of existence, its toil, its triumph, or its torment, is 
pretty well over. 

Nor is the incognito of editorial writing so well 
preserved as I wish that it was, after all. I can 
promise young writers, if they do anytliing remark- 
able, that they will be found out, and may be glor- 
ified much more than will be good for their tender 
constitutions. I like the work which is done well 
for the sake of doing it. I have moved about so 
long in the cloak of namelessness that I have been 
rather shame-faced about putting my name to any- 
thing. Habit is second nature, and one who has 
walked always in the shade does not relish an ex- 
hibition of himself in the meridian blaze. But for 
the encouragement of young journalists, I can assure 
them that a clever workman is always well known 
in the profession, and can usually command employ- 
ment. There is a kind of freemasonry in the call- 
ing. He who is least known to the world may have 
a great celebrity in the printing-offices, where a 
good reputation is best worth having. 



332 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

Let any newspaper writer bring care and charac- 
ter and marked individuality to his work, and those 
who persistently read the whole editorial page will 
soon come to know him by sight or by sound, if I 
may say so, if not by his name. They will inquire 
after him with a natural curiosity, and will not be 
put off without personal particulars. Do I fall into 
unpardonable egotism if I offer an illustration from 
my own memory ? Here before me is a letter which 
I once received from a woman and widow quite un- 
known to me, written with charming naivete, and 
yet with perfect dignity, only to tell me how much 
the husband whom she had lost liked to read what 
I wrote ; how he read it to her sometimes with 
tears, sometimes with loud lauo'hter ; how he was 
glad that the black bondman, for whom he had all 
his life himself been working, thinking, and speak- 
ing, had such a champion. The letter is a little yel- 
low now with age, but it has not lost a particle of 
the costly fragrance of sympathy and of that perfect 
good breeding which comes of swift and, may be, of 
over-suf&cient gratitude. Such a letter was worth 
much more than a year's money earnings to a man 
who never thought money the most important thing 
in this world of noble chances and of generous oppor- 
tunities. Then, too, these readers, whom it will be 
possible for the young journalist in time to secure, 
will always be sending to the office recognition of 
his work, all unknown though he may be to them. 
" Give this," somebody once wrote from New Hamp- 



NEWSPAPER DIDACTICS. 333 

shire, " to the author of the article on ." It 

was a superb eagle-feather, and I found it on my 
desk. You may be sure, my young friend, that you 
will get your little rewards as you go along ! But, 
above all, make your work a pleasure, and put your 
time, heart, and conscience into it. Do not expect 
that everybody will like your articles as well as you 
like them yourself. That, you know, would hardly 
be natural. But do your best with them; make 
them honest and earnest ; do not neglect, if you can 
help it, that touch of nature which makes the whole 
world kin ; and you may be sure, though you may 
miss wealth and fame and promotion and noisy 
plaudits, you will not want for readers, which, after 
all, is the main point, is it not ? 

One thing I must mention in conclusion. For 
some reason or other, there is a tendency in literary 
circles to depreciate the dignity and value of our 
calling; and with this, my advice to the young 
journalist is to keep no terms. Always assert, mod- 
estly but firmly, everywhere and upon all occasions, 
the importance and the usefulness of the profession, 
and do not allow this man because he has written a 
book, or that man because he is famous in politics, 
in science, or in anything else, to speak contemptu- 
ously of our guild. Newspapers are no longer what 
they were in my youth ; they employ, if not the 
best, at least the rarest kind of intellectual ability ; 
they have the tastes, the progress, and the peace of 
society much in their keeping, and he would say too 



334 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

much who should say that they are false to their 
trust. And so, with this admonition, and with those 
which I have before given of careful preparation, of 
industry, of fidelity and truth, I conclude with a 
hundred good wishes to those who are hoping or ex- 
pecting to fill the places which all my dear friends 
and associates must sooner or later leave vacant. 



NEWSPAPER PERILS. 335 



CHAPTER XXV. 

NEWSPAPER PEEILS. 

BOHEMIANISM. — ThE PLEASURE AND THE PENALTY. — ThE 

King of the Bohemians. — A Brilliant Dramatic Critic. 
— Three Jolly Painters. — Comic Newspapers and 
their Doleful Fate. — A Pli;^"ty of Good Advice 
Gratis. 

JOUENALISM has its pleasures and pains. Of 
these I have already spoken. But it has also 
its perils, of which I ought to say something, if the 
profession is to be fully discussed in these pages. I 
do not here refer to the enormous risk of starting a 
newspaper, and of actually putting money into it. 
That is a commercial matter, and the dangers to 
which I allude are mainly moral or intellectual. 
Every reader knows that the literary calling, pur- 
sued for the sake of supplying immediate wants, has 
always been likely to lead men, and especially young 
men, into temptation. That branch of literature 
which we call journalism is far from affording any 
exception to the rule — indeed, as far as possible. 
I have no notion whatever of preaching a sermon ; I 
am the last person in the world to do that ; but there 
are things which may be said pleasantly by a man 
of experience to which a man of less experience 



336 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

may deign to listen without any compromise of his 
dignity. 

Some quarter of a century ago, we imported from 
France, among other things which we could well do 
without, what is called Bohemianism. A Bohemian 
in those days was one who was clever in writing 
smart jokes and pretty poems and lively tales and 
brisk essays and other newspaper commodities which 
perish in the reading. If he did not have perma- 
nent employment, and generally there was nothing 
permanent about him, he hawked his wares from 
office to office, and sold them at tragically small 
prices, subsequently investing the amount, it was ill- 
naturedly declared, in a great deal of beer and a 
very little bread. Sometimes he was fantastic in 
costume, and when he was caricatured, as he fre- 
quently was, he was represented in a tall peaked 
hat, not unlike those which were once w^orn with 
velveteen coats by brigands in the melodramas. 
There was a droll picture of the Tribune office, 
out of every window of which a man in one of these 
sugar-loaf hats was depicted peering into the street 
in search of a paragraph. It was a vile slander, for 
we had no more of these hats than our neighbors, 
and as little Bohemianism, or what the sagacious 
public understood to be such, as any similar estab- 
lishment in the Square. There was a desperate effort 
to establish the Bohemian guild in New York, but 
the climate, I suppose, was unfavorable. It figured 
mostly in weekly newspapers which are dead long 



NEWSPAPER PERILS. 337 

ago, while the performers have followed their works. 
I do not mean to say, however, that there were not 
many excellent fellows and men of rare genius en- 
rolled under the Bohemian banner; young gentle- 
men were there, who soon found that such way of 
life was not wise ; poets were there, who have since 
won deserved and honorable fame, and who now pre- 
side with dignity at the family tea-table, and give 
good advice, with the morning muffin, to their well- 
grown boys and girls. Such a harum-scarum life, 
such listening to the chimes at midnight, and utter 
disregard of the conventionalities and respectabilities 
and responsibilities, generally tests a man pretty 
sharply. If he really has brains, he usually gets 
away from it before it gets away with him. Vaga- 
bondizing loses its charm at last. It is much nicer, 
after the dews of existence are dried up, to go to 
bed as early as possible, to take pains with one's 
stomach, to live cleanly, and to flee from the cares 
of life, its anxieties and its disappointments, to any 
home, however humble. 

Those who did not desert from the Bohemian 
ranks, as a rule, did worse. It was jolly while it 
lasted, but it could not last. There were a good 
many foolish though clever young men — I mean 
tolerably young — who used to meet every night in 
one of the beer vaults of a well-known establish- 
ment in Broadvvny, and there, with much consump- 
tion of lager and much smoking of pipes, hold high 
converse, and fancy that it was like Auerbach's cel- 
22 



338 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

lar in "Faust." The ceiling was low; the walls 
were of stone; the barrels and hogsheads were 
ranged about ; and indeed it was all quite mediaeval 
and gypsy-like and picturesque, — w^e choice spirits 
(in the flesh) being the most picturesque of all. And 
I have heard rather good talk there in my time. It 
was n't all pretence and playing at devil-may-care 
feeling and enjoyment, after all. Sometimes, we were 
serious enough, especially when it came to settling 
the score at two o'clock in the morning. 

There was one man who figured at these subter- 
ranean symposia who was known in New York as 
the King of the Bohemians, — a man whose life was 
so entirely illustrative of the perils which beset the 
career of a journalist that I venture to speak of him 
by name. I have the less scruple in doing so, be- 
cause he was perfectly well known at Paff' s, at Del- 
monico's, in all places to which men then resorted 
for social converse and for convivial enjoyment. Ev- 
erybody who knew anything of the newspaper busi- 
ness knew Henry Clapp. I was associated with him 
before he laughed, and made puns, and wrote light 
and clever articles in New York. I doubt if he could 
have produced an autobiography in any other than a 
merely entertaining way. I should have been a little 
doubtful of the details ; but he would surely have 
had materials enough for a fascinating book. He 
was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and when a 
mere boy made a voyage in a brig which was fitted 
out by Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, of the British Navy, 



NEWSPAPER PERILS. 339 

for the express pleasure and benefit of I^antucket 
boys. Sir Isaac being of the Coffin family which was 
so numerous in that island. Afterward Mr. Clapp 
was a merchant of oil and candles in Boston, where 
he was eminently respectable, a good church-member, 
and even a teacher, I believe, in a Sunday-school. 
Then he w^ent to New Orleans to engage in the same 
business. For some reason the oil and candle trade 
came to the grief of insolvency. After that the 
ready man made his first essay in journalism upon 
" Tlie New Bedford Bulletin," a newspaper of which 
I was the editor. I found him not without value ; 
whatever he could do at all he could do readily ; his 
conversational powers were uncommon : and so he 
stayed for a little while with us, and then suddenly 
went into the business of lecturing upon temperance 
and slavery, setting himself up as a great reformer, 
and a radical of the first class. Next, he edited a 
newspaper in Lynn, Massachusetts, printed by a rad- 
ical shoe-manufacturer. Clapp wrote so vigorously 
that he soon found himself sentenced to imprison- 
ment for thirty days for the offence of libelling an 
obnoxious justice of the peace who bore the eupho- 
nious name of Aaron Lumnus. Coming out, he was 
sent as delegate, I think, to some World's Temper- 
ance Convention, or World's Antislavery Convention, 
in London. Then he was heard of in Paris, where 
he did some work, as he told me, for one of the Lon- 
don newspapers as a correspondent. Herfe he met 
Mr. Greeley, and contracted with that innocent man 



340 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

for letters to " The Tribune," receiving, of course, a 
certain money amount in advance. If the letters 
were written they never were printed. Pretty soon 
he was back again in New York, where he assisted 
Mr. Brisbane in translating^ the works of Fourier. 
Until ill health overtook him, he was indomitable. 
He had a way of making friends, and of making them 
useful. Without one farthing of capital of his own 
he set up a newspaper called " The Saturday Press," 
and persuaded somebody to put money into it. 
When the money was gone the newspaper stopped. 
He was ready for any odd job, but failed in getting 
steady employment. He was generous, but utterly 
thriftless, and naturally wore out the patience of his 
benefactors. Darker and darker grew his fortunes, 
and when they were at the darkest he died ; but not 
until he had lost the faculty of rapid and clever work. 
The pleasant though shifty life, the merry nights 
with congenial companions, the courage which would 
not accept defeat as final, the swift expedients and 
handy devices, ended in tragedy at last. All that 
was left of him was sent back to the quiet island in 
which his happier days were spent. So passed from 
his dubious dominions the King of the Bohemians ! 
I have told this story in no spirit of puritanical 
censoriousness, and with only feelings of regretful 
affection. If it is for sympathetic recollection, it is 
also for warning. Who, if he could foresee it, would 
care to live such a life, or die such a death ? Bril- 
liancy is all well enough ; those talents are not to 



NEWSPAPER PERILS. 341 

be despised which attract friends and give a light 
and evanescent pleasure ; the delights of the senses 
are tempting so long as they last : but when one's 
head has grown gray, and one's natural ardor has 
abated ; when a bitter suspicion begins to dawn upon 
the mind that the way of life has been foolish; 
when the opportunities of work have become fewer, 
and the ability to do it well much smaller, a man of 
genius may envy those duller spirits who have not 
despised a homely prudence, and to whom the hum- 
drum performance of duty, however humble, has 
brought a little competence and a freedom from 
daily apprehension. Better is it to make catalogues 
and indexes, to write primers for children and his- 
tories for school-girls, to pass life in perpetual com- 
pilation or endless proof-reading, than to win a little 
temporary notoriety by tickling the fancy of an in- 
constant public, than to try to live upon what one 
has done after ceasing to do anything, as a charlatan 
starving himself for a show exists upon the tissues 
which meals long before digested have given him. 

Yet those were pleasant nights in the old cellar, 
after all, wlien the last novel was discussed, the last 
new play anatomized ; and the fun sometimes, but 
not often, became fast and furious. Poor AVilkins, 
now dead, like the rest, would drop in, with the fresh- 
est intelligence from the theatre, or would tell us 
something of the drama which he was engaged in 
writing. Now and then he would take us round to 
his own room, which was somewhere in the neigh- 



342 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

borhood, — a wondrous place as I remember it; full, 
it seemed, chiefly of pipes and empty beer-bottles, 
and bottles which we were invited at once to empty ; 
with the walls covered with prints of all sizes and 
descriptions ; and with books heaped about as if they 
had been shot there from a cart and were still where 
perchance they had fallen. Singularly enough, there 
was a bed in one corner of this retreat, but I could 
hardly imagine my friend going into it. At any rate, 
he invariably refused to seek it so long as anybody 
could be persuaded to stay and chat with him and 
smoke with him, and listen to his light, salient, and 
sarcastic talk of men, of manners, of literature, and 
especially of the drama. Sometimes I have thought 
that, rather than not talk at all, after we had gone, 
he would lapse into one long soliloquy, or address 
his clever observations to the stove or the bed-post, 
or to the pictured ladies in the light drapery of the 
ballet, who smirked out of the dingy frames. To the 
genial and clever man death, as I have said, soon 
came ; and toil and pleasure alike being over, he took 
his rest by night and by day, with no more comedies 
to write or to criticise. 

Perhaps for some men a quiet, domestic, house- 
keeping life has small attractions. They either nat- 
urally like the uncertainty, the variations between 
plenty and penury, and the stimulus of want which 
puts them upon their mettle ; or else, through habit, 
they have grown to like it. Once I heard three 
young painters blithely discussing the prospect of 



NEWSPAPER PERILS. 343 

breakfast in the studio of one of them. They could 
not eat the dusty plaster cast of the Farnese Her- 
cules, they could not assuage the keen demands of 
appetite by devouring paint, and, though boys enough 
to have good stomachs, it never occurred to them to 
draw lots and to say, " We must eat we," like ship- 
wrecked mariners in Mr. Thackeray's mournful bal- 
lad. At last one remembered that he had half a 
bottle of claret in his room, another that he had a 
shilling in his pocket, which would buy bread; and 
so a light but sufficient banquet was extemporized 
with much cheerful talk and happy laughter. I fear 
that I shall injure the moral of my story if I say 
that there was a plenty of tobacco and no end of 
pipes. But this narcotic is useful after a slender re- 
past, and I am bound to remark that it was, as the 
doctors say, " exhibited," and that it helped the talk 
amazingly. Ah ! the happy, indomitable heart of 
youth, why can it not always stay with us ? Why 
cannot we keep it for the days in which we shall 
need it most, so that we should not so often and so 
sadly be obliged to admit that we have no pleasure 
in them ? Why should we be doomed to wisdom 
without the force to employ it, and to knowledge, 
which the hand is too tremulous to record ? It is 
Coleridge, I think, who says finely that experience 
is like the stern-lights of a ship, wliich illuminate 
only the waves wliich have been passed over, and 
not the wastes wliich are before. But these are 
doleful reflections. Let us pass to merrier matters ! 



344 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

A good comic newspaper, with a plenty of money 
in the treasury, would be a great godsend to Bohe- 
mia, while the money lasted. I have known some- 
thing of several of the funny newspapers which in 
past days have been started but not established in 
New York, and the memories thereof are drearily 
elegiac. These sheets have been good, bad, and in- 
different, but a common fatality has overtaken them. 
In this world of folly and absurdity, droll or satirical 
writing ought not to be difficult, yet I believe that 
editors find it the most difficult thing to secure. 
We Americans have been given up to believe that 
the pun is the best form of humor, whereas it is a 
radically bad one. Used habitually, its tendency is 
to degenerate into absurdity and inexpressible fool- 
ishness. Any cobbler can make a good pun ; but to 
take up a topic, to toss it merrily from hand to hand, 
to dandle and cuff it, and present it under a dozen 
ridiculous aspects, to make it amusing in spite of its 
inherent gravity, and generally to get out of it what- 
ever fun it is capable of yielding, — a man must have 
a natural talent for this, or he cannot do it at all. 
All the managers of comic newspapers with Avhom I 
have been acquainted howled for contributors of real 
merit, and usually howled in vain. The literary fel- 
lows brought little which even Democritus himself 
could have smiled at. There was always a tendency 
to glide into pathos, or to lapse into ferocious indig- 
nation. How any man could have supposed that a 
daily comic newspaper could be written, much less 



NEWSPAPER PERILS. 345 

sold, in New York, passes my comprehension ; yet 
this was wliat was undertaken, about twenty years 
ago, by Mr. Addie, an Englishman who had been 
brought up in Moxon's bookshop in London. I 
wrote an introductory poem for " Momus," as the 
journal was called, which perhaps helped to kill it, 
for it only lived about a week. There was not much 
that was good about " Momus " except the name, 
which I think a fine one. Then came " Vanity Fair." 
Poor Mr. Stevens, the proprietor, used to ask me, 
with tears in his eyes, if I did not know some clever 
young fellows who would write for him ; and I used 
to answer, with tears in my eyes, that I did not. 
And yet he had the pick of whatever was to be had 
in New York at that time, including several lads 
who have since made their mark, though not in the 
comic business. One of the most dreadful of demises 
was that of "Mrs. Grundy," which should have 
lasted longer with such a man as Mr. Charles Daw- 
son Shanly at its head. I ought to mention to their 
credit, that, though all the comic newspapers with 
which I have been connected have fallen into insol- 
vency, I have invariably been paid every dollar 
which was due me ; which shows perhaps that fun 
and a keen sense of financial obligations are not 
incompatible. I think one mistake which most of 
the projectors of these lamentable speculations made 
was that they followed " Punch " too closely in fix- 
ing the physiognomy of their journals. The titles, 
the size, the type, the make-up, and the cartoon 



346 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST, 

have been as nearly like those of the London droll 
as possible. This doubtless cost our sheets an air 
of originality ; nor do I think that imitations of the 
best things are likely to be successful. " Punch " 
has lived and flourished because he is British in 
every fibre of his crooked constitution. When we 
have a comic newspaper which in its way is just as 
essentially American, perhaps its early funeral will 
not be predestinate. But I do not look for it im- 
mediately. 

The incoming generation of journalists will have 
much greater chances of doing valuable and success- 
ful work than that which is about to take its leave 
of life. Every day the newspaper is becoming 
more important to the happiness, the comfort, the 
convenience, and the progress of the world. The 
Bohemian element of journalism, though it may 
still linger in certain newspaper offices, is now^ no 
more tolerated in those which are carefully managed, 
— no more, in fact, than it would be in the oldest 
and most solemnly respectable banking-house in 
Wall Street. Order, system, punctuality, industry 
are now looked for quite as much as brilliant ability 
and a ready pen. The different departments of duty 
are well defined, and there is no longer much oppor- 
tunity for the man who plumes himself upon doing 
one thing as well as another. In writing this chap- 
ter I have kept in mind those shoals and quicksands 
which beginners in the profession will do well care- 
fully to avoid. I do not suppose that they will be 



NEWSPAPER PERILS. 347 

very grateful to me; and, no doubt, many of the 
very youngest of them know much more about the 
wliole matter than I do ; and as there is no statute 
against their availing themselves at once of their 
knowledge, my advice to them is to secure instantly 
the highest positions, at the largest salaries, and to 
keep those lofty places if they can. 

It is with journalism as with every other depart- 
ment of human enterprise and energy. Brains are 
not quite enough, albeit they are eminently desir- 
able. Literary resources are not all-sufficient, al- 
though they may be many and various. It may 
happen, in the race for newspaper success, that the 
tortoise will beat the hare. Most people when they 
get old are likely with a sigh to say, "If I had 
done so and so, and had not done so and so, I should 
now have money, fame, competence, serenity of 
mind." Well, perhaps, and perhaps not. Who 
knows ? One may be sure, however, of the day 
which is passing, or of the night in which he com- 
piles, arranges, makes all manner of manuscript 
under the midnight gas, and wins the right to slum- 
ber until the next day's noon. This is about all 
which any man in any field of labor can be certain 
of. And if he be true and faithful, day by day 
and hour by hour, he need not fear to see the last 
light of life extinguished, and may look witli con- 
fidence for the first gleam of the eternal sunrise. 



348 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 

The Beginnings of American Literature, — The Author of 
"Old Grimes." — Mr. Kettell's "Specimens." — The 
Aspirations of Boyhood. — Mr. N. P. Willis. — Early 
American Book Manufacture. — A Story with a Moral. 

THERE are people whom one has just seen, — 
tantum Vh^gilium vidi, — and who glance 
athwart the memory in no very imposing way. I 
fell into a kind of dream, as I took my pen in my 
hand for this chapter, and I could not help thinking 
of those who were the foremost lights of American 
literature so many years ago. Does the reader re- 
member what a number of poets we had in those 
times ? Nobody need be afraid that I intend to 
make out a directory, a catalogue raisonne of them, 
for that would be too bad altogether. It is depress- 
ing to consider how they came up, and twittered 
and chirped as confidently as the city sparrows who 
spoil our supplementary daylight slumbers. I saw 
some of these characters in my morning days; but, 
upon my word, I am quite ashamed to introduce 
them to the present company. Possibly they were 
as original and clever, as harmonious and inspired, 
as many whom we now take approvingly to our 



A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 349 

hearts ; but I fear that they would seem dreadfully 
old-fashioned to the devotees of our modern maga- 
zine lyrics. This I will say for them, that they 
were sadly misled by a superfluity of applause. We 
were then so willing to be pleased. We never 
minded that it was all a faint echo of this English 
poet or the other, — of Pope, of Cowper, or of Byron. 
Long before we were rid of the incumbrance of his 
Majesty, George the Third, our bards began to 
versify. I say frankly that all before the beginning 
of the nineteenth century seems to be nearly worth- 
less ; but for two or three names, it was worthless 
afterwards. I ought to know, because among the 
foibles with which I have sought to divert the 
tedium of life has been that of making a complete 
collection of American poets. Upon my shelves 
to-day there is a disheartening lot of literary lumber 
which anybody may take down and carry off without 
protest from myself. It is all at the service of the 
paper-maker who thinks that it is worth cartage. 
There \^as nothing in the least original in this 
notion of mine of picking up metrical nobodies. 
Another gentleman with an equally soft heart had 
done it before me. This was Mr. Albert G. Green, 
an amiable man of letters in Providence, Pihode 
Island, who swooped in an enormous amount of the 
same sort of trash, including a thin volume of thin- 
ner poems, which I was ass enough to print in my 
infancy. Pray what should a man write reminis- 
cences for unless it be to confess his sins and 



350 ■ REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

juvenile lyrical iniquities ? Let the reader make 
note that, thanks to a benevolent destiny, which 
has taken better care of me than I have taken of 
myself, this volume of mine is among the very 
scarcest books in the English language. My excel- 
lent friend, Mr. Phles, has a copy, which I have 
put him upon oath not to sell unless he sells it to 
me, when most assuredly it will be destroyed by 
fire or by fragmentary disintegration. 

As we are gossiping in this number without nmch 
restraint, and with a rather liberal ciirrente-calamosity 
■ — this phrase belongs to Mr. N. P. Willis, of whom 
I shall have something to say presently, — there 
can be no harm in speaking of Mr. Albert G. Green 
above-mentioned. What did he do ? I hear the 
ill-informed reader asking that question, which I at 
once answer triumphantly. He wrote "Old Grimes," 
— that little felicity of a poem which got a grip 
upon the memories of a generation. Children recited 
of the good old man, and how he " wore not rights 
and lefts for shoes, but changed his eveft-y day." 
School-boys declaimed the piece, and waved their 
hands in front of their waistcoats when they an- 
nounced that his coat was "all buttoned down 
before." There was nothing specially original in 
this small epic; but somehow it had an immense 
success. That kind of verse was devised long before 
at the French court, and was copied by Goldsmith 
in his "Elegy on the Death of Madame Blaise," 
and that other little piece ending with " the dog it 



A GOSSIP OF LETTERS, 351 

was that died." I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. 
Green occasionally, and have now this later pleasure 
of remembering him as an agreeable talker and 
most amiable man. Can anybody tell me why such 
clever persons as he was do not get on ? They throw 
out a fine thing or two, and then they subside into 
silence. I have struggled through all this series 
against the temptation of putting people into them 
who were never heard of at all. I know nothing 
like the fine genius which writes no books, chal- 
lenges no observation, cares not a farthing for fame, 
but still goes on dreaming much and doing nothing, 
taking down the folios and putting them back in a 
listless way, and while celebrity is within its grasp 
not deigning to grasp it. The verdict of the world 
is " laziness," but the world knows nothing of that 
other verdict which fancy or imagination, which 
delicate taste or delightful thought, passes upon itself. 
Doubtless Mr. Green might have written a long 
poem or fifty short ones, only he did not please to 
do it. To inquire into his reasons, or those of any 
man who sees fit to keep himself to himself, is some- 
thing like impertinence. 

Sometimes I have a great mind to make a book 
about the nobodies: only this passion for making 
books which could not possibly find a publisher 
should be kept well under. There was no end of 
nobodies, I recollect, in the catalogue of Mr. Green's 
library when it came to the hammer. It seems to 
have been a kind of American Foundling Hospital 



352 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

of Wit. But forty or fifty years ago Mr. Kettell 
had got together three thick volumes of " Specimens." 
This editor was understood to be a most fastidious 
person. In my own time, he was still managing 
" The Boston Courier " ; and as I did not happen to 
agree with him in politics, he was accustomed to 
comment rather savagely upon my own newspaper 
productions. I might have retorted most unanswer- 
ably by pointing to his own compilation, and by 
reminding him that poor William J. Snelling had 
dubbed him " Dunce Kettell " in that satire called 
" Truth : A New-Year's Gift for Scribblers," which 
made some noise in its time. Snelling fell afoul of 
everybody, and everybody of whom he fell afoul is 
by this time forgotten, — Mellen and McLellan, 
Dawes and Smith, Jones and Thompson ; and so, 
for that matter, is poor Mr. Snelling, who could 
take care of everything except his own affairs, and 
of all mankind except himself He was an excellent 
specimen of the literary workman who has brains 
and hand, cleverness and power of application, — 
everything to make the voyage of life prosperous 
except a rudder. He died long before he was fifty ; 
and all his West Point education, and all his writing 
by day and by night for twenty years, gave him 
was fourteen lines in an encyclopaedia. 

I permitted myself in my last chapter to say a 
word to those who yearn for a position in journal- 
isin. I ought to have remembered all those others 
who, while the dews of youth are upon their heads, 



A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 353 

aspire to write books. I think with great tender- 
ness of the many to whom, as their sun rises, the 
field of literature appears a fresh one, where nobody 
has been before them, and where they have nothing 
to do but to sow, to water, and to reap, — or where 
so many fine spirits have preceded them, whom they 
.think to equal or even to surpass. From eighteen 
to twenty-one what dreams are dreamed, and what 
splendid anticipations come to gild all the early 
scene! Epics, novels, histories, studies in philos- 
ophy, — what a chance there seems to be ! These 
poor lyrics even, — who knows but a publisher will 
be found for them, and possibly a little money, which, 
after all, is convenient from day to day ? Every- 
body of literary propensities passes through the 
ordeal, and only emerges from it after a gloomy ex- 
perience. Yet here let me speak kindly of these 
visionary hours, which do not come twice in a life- 
time. There is such trust then, and hope and con- 
fidence and candor ! I would n't say a word about 
it all, only I know that there are so many young 
folks, lads, and even lasses, who are passing through 
the same delight or despair, and wdio would so like 
to produce a book. They are in the storm and 
stress period, which Goethe did not escape. They 
demand recognition, having naught whereby to be 
recognized. There is nothing sadder than this 
floundering about and feeling for one's feet in the 
welter of literature, and the deep Byronian sadness 
because bottom and firm footing cannot be found. 
23 



354 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

The people who write now for the magazines do 
not know what a hard time we had of it once. 
There was nothing for a lad given to literature to 
do, but to go about in shabby clothes, to live upon 
his father or his friends, to be considered an idiot 
or a maniac, and to exhaust utterly everybody's 
patience. I do not mean to say that a few did not 
meet w^ith tolerable success ; but they were excep- 
tions, and one such, brilliant in irts day, I recall. 

I do not think of any man so well known in his 
time, and now so utterly forgotten, as Mr. N. P. 
"Willis. He comes naturally into these recollections 
because, one fine summer morning, when, Avith a 
sore heart, I was doing scrivener's work in a regis- 
try of deeds, I saw him slowly pacing, with a Pall- 
Mali manner, under the great elms upon the other 
side of the street. He had come to New Bedford to 
be married to the adopted daughter of one of its 
most distinguished citizens, the Hon. Joseph Grin- 
nell, who w^as in the Twenty-eighth, the Twenty- 
ninth, the Thirtieth, and the Thirty-first Congresses. 
Mr. Grinnell was of the same family which, not 
many years ago, was distinguished in the commer- 
cial and political circles of New York ; but he was 
himself distinguished at Washington for his fidelity 
to the duties of his position, for his admirable grasp 
of all financial questions, and for an integrity of 
which nobody ever dared to express a doubt. They 
used to call him the Deacon in Washington — I 
wish there were more members there now, w^orthy 



A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 355 

to be included in such diaconate. He had his dis- 
trict in his hand, and went back to the capitol just 
as long as he pleased to go. It was a famous 
district, tliat sandy, whaling, fishing shore of the 
Atlantic Ocean ! When it found a good member, it 
stood by him nobly. It sent old John Reed steadily 
from 1821 to 1841 to Washington to look out for 
its interests. He might have gone longer, only the 
Whigs wanted him, in a moment of emergency, as a 
candidate for lieutenant-governor. Governor Briggs, 
of Berkshire County, was the candidate for gover- 
nor ; and somebody said, felicitously, in the conven- 
tion, " We will give them codfish and potatoes ! " 
And we did it. The man of potatoes — he had been 
a hatter when young — was our governor for six 
years, and he had plain John Eeed for his lieuten- 
ant all that time. I wish that somebody could tell 
me why the people now-a-days get so much sooner 
tired of their servants. Public men do not seem to 
be re-elected over and over again as they used to 
be. Political life is growing shorter and shorter. 
The voters may trust as implicitly, but they get 
weary of names and persons more swiftly. Is it 
because the offices are so few compared with the 
crowd which desires them ? Sometimes I look 
down upon the great shouldering, elbowing, wrig- 
gling host of those who have been elected or ap- 
pointed, or who want to be, and I can think of 
nothing but Thomas Carlyle's " pot of vipers." Pray 
let nobody believe that I mean any disrespect. No 



356 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

one lifts his hat higher than I do to the man who, by 
courtesy, is called Honorable. Eather more, even, 
than the man who is elected after a heady fight, do 
I reverence the other person who is not. His merits 
may have been quite equal to those which secured 
success. He may have been merely the victim of a 
rainy day, or a badly- watched ballot-box; of chance, 
of mischance, or of mismanagement. But, at least, 
in the old times, if he got in, he was apt to stay in. 
Possession was nine points of the law, and one 
over. That was the happy fortune of honest John 
Reed in our codfish district ; and his father, another 
John Reed, had the seat before him. They used to 
speak of the last John as " the life member." Those 
two together were in Washington as the Cape Cod 
representative for twenty-four years. I have a 
pleasant recollection of John the Younger. When 
he was lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, and 
had the executive clemency in his hands, he par- 
doned for me a great scoundrel who was my client ; 
for I was then in the law. He was a fine, old- 
fashioned man, dressed in honest black, and with a 
large ruffle to his shirt. Perhaps it would have a 
good moral effect if we could have shirt-ruffles (and 
the appropriate snuff-boxes) restored. Possibly 
these had something to do with gentlemanly man- 
ners, which really are not so common as they once 
were. 

And, speaking of gentlemanly manners, I am re- 
minded of Mr. N. P. Willis, whom I left strolling up 



A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 357 

tlie street in our old town. He deserves mention here, 
not as a poet, though some of his poetry was clever, 
but as a journalist, and a good one. He has shared 
the fate of all who give their time and talents and 
strength to newspapers ; there is all the more reason 
why here he should be freshly remembered. He never 
had anything to do with politics : probably he did 
not know much about them ; but his editorial work 
in " The Mirror," in " The New Mirror," in " The 
Corsair," and in " The Home Journal," did a good 
deal to correct the somewhat savage and coarse 
style of the prevailing journalism of the period. If 
the matter of his articles had been as good as the 
manner, and if he had not principally confined him- 
self to evanescent topics, he would have made a 
fame equal to that of Addison or of "Washington 
Irvinor. But he would write — in En^dish which 
to-day I still think to be exquisite — about hats 
and coats, parties and receptions, and all manner of 
fashionable tweedledum and tweedledee. He was 
intensely egotistical, but then it was always in a 
graceful and well-bred way. He was unmistakably 
foppish in his work ; but somehow you could not 
help feeling that there was a degree of manliness 
under it all, and here and there a great cropping out 
of common sense. Mr. Willis had in a large meas- 
ure that best faculty of a journalist : he knew what 
people would like to read. The letters which he 
sent to his different newspapers from Europe might 
be a little airy and self-sufl&cient ; but he described 



358 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

people in whom everybody was interested, at a time 
when literary information from abroad was not so 
full as it is now. Those who thought that he 
toadied and manoeuvred to get into good society in 
London were much mistaken. An artist who was 
there at the same time assured me that Mr. Willis's 
society was sought for, and that he had no difficulty 
in meeting the best people. He came back to his 
work, and kept to it cheerfully and assiduously to 
the last. He was lied about and libelled, but it 
never seemed very much to disturb his equanimity. 
Most men who are clever and successful meet with 
the same annoyance, 

Mr. Willis's many books, now mostly unremem- 
bered, with their fantastic titles and frequent rehash- 
ing, bring me again to the subject of book-making. 
I sometimes ask myself whether, if I had my life to 
live over, I would try to put what I had to say into 
two or three books, which might have a chance of 
living, or once more be content with a little humble 
usefulness in my day and generation, and so accept 
oblivion cheerfully. I remember talking this matter 
over with my excellent friend and monitor, Dr. 
Ephraim Peabody, of King's Chapel, in Boston, — 
the fine scholar and eloquent preacher of whom 
Harriet Martin eau speaks so kindly in her " Eetro- 
spect of Western Travel." He had the instincts of 
a scholar, and he thought that every young man of 
literary aspirations should try to produce what he 
called '' a remarkable book." I pointed to his library 



A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 359 

and said, "What chance is there of a remarkable 
book, or for its author ? " I had brought him a great 
package of my poems, but he did not seem to think 
that these, whether in folio or quarto or octavo, 
would be considered " remarkable." At this indif- 
ference on his part I was sorely hurt, though I see 
now, when it is too late, how right he was, and what 
an addleheaded youth I must have been. I know 
now that Dr. Peabody, the clearest of thinkers, as 
well as the kindest of men, was not thinking so 
much of the remarkable book aforesaid as he was of 
the study and industry, the devotion and patience, 
which might or might not result in the production 
of a valuable work, but were certain to result in 
right character and conduct. It is not the book but 
the making of a book which may be the making of 
a man, whether he finds a publisher or not. Fifty 
years ago it was something of a distinction to appear 
with all the pomp and circumstance of title-page 
and dedication and preface and table of contents, — 
somethins?, but not much of an honor. Even ear- 
lier, there was more printing done in the United 
States than was necessary or wholesome. In many 
a little country town the presses were worked pretty 
persistently, — in such places as Brattleborough, Yt., 
Walpole, K H., and Elizabethtown, N. J. The Eng- 
lish classics were frequently reproduced ; and now 
and then original works, mostly sermons, which 
must have been hard to write and not easy to listen 
to. But when The Edinburgh Eeview sneeringly 



360 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

asked, " "Wlio reads an American book ? " it was, 
however discourteous, substantially right. What 
literary triumphs we have had since need not be 
considered ; but if any master or miss should consult 
me about the wisdom of attempting the manufacture 
of a book, perhaps my advice would be a little dis- 
couraging. There seems, alas ! to be so many of 
them already. Come with me, my aspiring young 
friend, to the stall just down the street. Here is a 
long row of shabby and ragged volumes. The rains 
of heaven have fallen upon them ; the different 
winds have swept over them the dust of the thor- 
oughfares ; they have sunk in price from dollars to 
shillings, and from shillings to pence. Yet sweet 
arid pleasant to the author of each was the fresh 
bantling when it reached him. He is dead, and the 
book is as good as dead. Some copies were given 
away; few, if any, were sold: There was, first, 
disappointment, and then, may be, heartbreak. Bet- 
ter to be a journalist. The public is obliged to buy 
what you write, whether it likes your work or not. 
Make a book if you can and must, but be sure that 
you must, and, above all, be sure that you can ! 

One thing I am anxious to say, and I hope that 
it will not be taken unkindly. Thirty odd years 
ago, all the young w^omen of the country had been 
made ambitious of fame and of fortune by the tem- 
porary success of mediocre books also written by 
young women. One of them, who is since a good 
wife and mother, and who never puts pen to paper 



A GOSSIP OF LETTERS. 361 

except to write affectionate letters to her uncles and 
aunts and cousins, brought me a great heap of man- 
uscript. And would I read it ? And would I say 
what I thought al^out it ? And did I think that 
Messrs. Octavo, Brevier, & Co. would give her a lot 
of money for it as they gave Miss Dumming for her 
beautiful story of "The Lamp Extinguisher?" I 
said most positively that I would not read it, and 
that she had better read it to me. That was my sel- 
fishness, because I liked to listen to her voice. But 
alas ! that pleasant voice — " an excellent thing in 
woman " — could not, for many pages, conceal from 
me that the romance w^as not wliat I had hoped 
against hope it might be. And then, taking my life 
in my liand, I nerved myself for a short address. I 
said, " My dear Miss X., I would n't bother with this 
sort of thing, if I were you. It is ladylike, and the 
grammar is not bad, and your handwriting, I observe, 
is unexceptionable ; but those scoundrels of publish- 
ers never buy anything which is really good, and I 
fear that this, and anything else which you might 
write, would be altogether too good for them. If 
you could sell it for a fair price, and so add to the 
comforts of life, which you so entirely deserve, I 
would n't say a word ; but you can't. If I were 
you, I would get from literature and study something 
better than fame or money, neither of which you are 
likely to win. I would make it a private pleasure 
and a personal pastime. I would write, not to 
please others, but to please myself, and I would de- 



362 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

posit my best things under the lock and key of my 
portfolio." She went away sorrowing much and a 
little tiffed ; but whether she took my advice or not, 
I never saw her poor little novel in print. This is 
an anecdote which I put here for the benefit of sev- 
eral correspondents whom I have not had time to 
answer. I wish them all manner of prosperity ; 
and Avill they please to take this as a sort of circu- 
lar response ? 



BOOK COLLECTING. 363 



CHAPTER XXYII. 

BOOK COLLECTING. 

The First Old Book. — Chaiims of Ancient Volumes.— 
Scholarship of the Old Writeus. — Aldus, Froben, 

SCHCEFFER, ElZEVIR. — PRIZES IN THE LOTTERY. — ANNO- 
TATED Books and Books with Autographs. —The 
Solace of Reading. 



A' 



S I approach tlie end of this chit-chat, remem- 
- bering that the veteran may lag superfluous 
on the stage, I may naturally recall the particular 
and personal pleasure which has tempered the fag 
and difiaculties of my career. I do not know tliat 
the fact is of any consequence to the reader, but to 
me it seems merely a decent courtesy that I should 
mention here those who have been my best friends 
through all the tangle and trouble and toil of life. 
If the°re be anything for which I thank Fortune pro- 
foundly, it is that I early acquired a taste for read- 
ing, and have always been able to find a refuge from 
the dark austerities of the present in the splendors 
and fascinations of the past. I date my partiality 
for old books from a very early period ; in fact, from 
the time when, only just breeched, T stood upon a 
chair and found two or three of them in my grand- 
mother's closet. One of these, as I happen to re- 



364 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

member, was an account of the " Life and Travels of 
Captain John Smith." It has been one of the mis- 
eries of which I have been impatient, that I have 
been unable to recall the date of this, my first rare 
book. Lacking the date, I am equally at a loss for 
the title, and when a book-maniac knows neither 
date nor title, he may well be considered somewhat 
at sea. All I am certain of is, tliat the book was a 
quarto ; that the date was sixteen hundred and 
something; that the smell of the leathern cover 
made a profound impression upon my nostrils ; and 
that I was forever looking out for old books after- 
wards. My strong conjecture is that the volume in 
question must have been "A Description of New 
England; or the Observation and Discoveries of 
Captain John Smith (Admiral of that Country), in 
the North of that Country, in the Year of our Lord 
1614. London: 1616, 4to." 

From that time forth I came near to discarding 
nineteenth-century books altogether. I was re- 
pelled by their rawness. They seemed to me to be 
plebeians. Us noveaux riches of the library, with their 
gilt-cloth coats and pages superabundantly white 
and black. The contempt which I conceived for 
this haberdashery of binding, a good many years 
liave been unable to eradicate. I think pleasantly 
of my first primer, for it was literally in boards, — 
not pasteboards, but wooden boards, — with a thin 
cover of paper pasted upon the sides. Since I early 
learned to smell the old calf, the finer fragrance of 



BOOK COLLECTING. 365 

Kiissia, that indefinable scent which an old book has 
when you put your nose between the leaves and are 
rejuvenated by its mustiness, I have often felt sorry 
for se^'eral modern authors of merit because they 
were born so late. Yet why should I extend to 
them my useless sympathy ? If they only hang to- 
gether, in spite of our extemporaneous and extremely 
indifferent binding, for a hundred and fifty years, 
I am not sure that they will not be dear to col- 
lectors yet unborn, only I cannot help my doubts 
of their intrinsic value. Having read many old 
books, for which I trust that no bibliomaniac will 
despise me, somehow I cannot help the feeling that 
often they are more worthy of perusal than the 
modern manufactures. Typographical facilities have 
exceedingly multiplied ; there are machines for type- 
setting, for printing, for binding. It is easier and 
cheaper to get a bad book printed and published 
than it once was. So it happens that books of the 
second and third class, printed as late as the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries, are fuller of meat 
and marrow, of careful scholarship, degenerating, it 
is true, sometimes into pedantry, than ours of the 
same order now are. One finds in them all manner 
of erudite oddness and queer, quaint knowledge. 
An old book may in many respects be pretty bad, 
but generally it came from a scholar who garnished 
it with numberless scraps of ancient wisdom, until it 
was plethoric with notes and rich in marginalia. 
People who fancy that Burton's "Anatomy of Mel- 



366 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

ancholy " is the only book of its kind, can boast but 
limited investigation. Burton has been the fashion, 
and has been a good deal more talked about than 
read. But the recluse scholar of Christ Church only 
carried to a noble excess the custom of the day. 
Every writer of his time resorted to the great mines 
of ancient learning, and was more familiar with 
Horace and Juvenal and ]\Iartial than we are with 
Pope and Addison. Where did Bayle find out all 
that he knew ? or Montaigne ? or Jeremy Taylor ? 
I think that these men, who were not supposed to 
have studied hard, studied harder than men do now. 
If you read one of Dryden's dramatic prefaces, — 
much better worth reading than the dreadful plays 
which they precede, — you are surprised by the 
scholarship of one who certainly never had much 
time for study. It is so with all the old books, or 
at least with many of them. There is great debate 
about the amount of classical knowledge which 
Shakespeare possessed ; but is it not usually forgot- 
ten how familiar the ancient writers must have been 
in his time to those even who could only read the 
vernacular? Latin then could hardly be called a 
dead language. There were no English books which 
were not full of it, with translations usually ap- 
pended. But this suggests a discussion into which 
I do not mean to enter. I have only meant to 
allude to a charm of the old books, which those who 
love them can afford to hear laughed and sneered at, 
as they often do. Let those laugh who win ! 



BOOK COLLECTING. 367 

There is nothing about whicli the generality of 
mankind is more ignorant than book collecting. 
There used to be a notion, which I have often lieard, 
that bibliomaniacs never read their treasures. Now 
it so happens that I have never known an ardent 
collector who was not also a great reader. This, 
however, may have been my luck. Mr. Burton, in 
his pleasant volume, " The Book Hunter," speaks of 
one who "was guiltless of all intermeddling with 
the contents of books, but in their external attri- 
butes his learning was marvelhnis." This was the 
inch-rule man, who was always measuring margins 
and the height of the binding. Apropos of this, 
Mr. Burton speaks of the Elzevir C?esar of 1G35 in 
the Imperial Library at Paris, of which Burnet in- 
forms us that it is four inches and ten twelfths in 
height, and is the tallest copy of that volume in the 
world. I suppose that the average height of Elze- 
virs is four inches and nine twelfths ; that is the 
height of my Elzevir Statins. Of these little books, 
it may be observed tliat most who want to show 
that they know a little about the history of printing 
always say something of Elzevirs, as if they were 
scarce, whereas they are the easiest books to pick up 
in the world. Nor have I ever been able to regard 
Elzevirs as particularly well printed. In the mid- 
dle of the seventeenth century, though the typo- 
graphical art had made great advances, the pocket 
style of books being a radically wrong one, tlie Am- 
sterdam printer's small type must have ruined a 



368 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

great many eyes, if the human orb was constructed 
then as it is now. There were better printers than 
Elzevir, even in his own style, — Maire, for instance, 
whose exquisite little Tacitus lies side by side 
before me with the Elzevir Statins, and beats it 
in all qualities of letter and press-work and paper. 
It was printed in 1640, thirteen years before tlie 
Elzevir Statins, and is in every way a handsome 
book. But let us not be afraid to go back I Here 
is George Buchanan's paraphrase of the Psalms of 
David, printed in 1595, in Planten's office, and still 
in the toucrh orio^inal vellum. It is in the Italic 
letter of Aldus, and is dedicated to Mary, Queen of 
Scots, in a Latin epigTam, at a time when it was not 
yet absurd to style her a nymph. See here, too, be- 
side it — with the imprint " Hagoniae, Apud lohan- 
nen Setzerium, MDXXV." — sundry theological 
tracts of jMelancthon, in a binding of embossed 
leather, which had grand clasps upon it once, of sil- 
ver, maybe, and very likely, for they are gone now, 
and possibly melted up, and circulated in the shape 
of trade-dollars at this very hour. It is charming 
to give one's self to happy conjecture. But look 
again at this curious volume, interesting though not 
very old ! A man better informed about it than I 
am could lecture upon it for an hour. See how the 
binding is of solid boards with the printed leather 
stretched over them. In what forest grew the wood 
from which this timber was sawed ? See, too, how, 
at the sixteenth page of the Annotations of the good 



BOOK COLLECTING. 



369 



Melanctlion upon the Proverbs, — wMch I have not 
read and do not intend to read, — you may observe 
" Cap VI " in three or four line letter. The chapter 
itself is upon the other side. The title is put in that 
ignoble place to save paper, which was dearer then 
than it is now. But we have had enough of these 
little books. No, we have not; for here are the 
"Annotations of Erasmus," of Rotterdam, upon all 
the Epistles of Paul, and printed by John Schceffer, 
at Mentz, in 1522. It is in the Aldine letter, with 
the quaintest specimens of wood-engravmg m the 
titles I would not read it through for a great deal, 
but what a book it is to look at ! It would be worth 
something to have seen this binding of vellum, so 
prettily impressed, as it came fresh from Schceffer s 
office But let there be no misundersUndmg ! This 
Schceffer was only the grandson of the great, origi- 
nal Schffiffer, included as an inventor of priiitiiig 
with Guttenberg and Faust. Somebody read this 
book once, for there are annotations in red ink upon 
the margin. It belonged to " B. Ec-esius," as I learn 
from a cramped autograph upon the cover. I won- 
der who "B. Eajsius" was? Whoever he was, he 
was a Latinist, for, though he did not add "Liber/' 
he wrote himself in the genitive " B Fa^su, and loft 
" Liber " to be understood. 

I liu"er doubtingly over these somewhat ancient 
volumes, for I have a horrible suspicion that inost 
of my kind readers, who have forgiven my garru ity 
so Ion-, do not care for them much. I have bad 

24 



370 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

melancholy experiences in my day. People came 
to see me ; and, full of the spirit of hospitality, I 
was anxious to entertain them. I unlocked the 
cases and showed them the treasures. I had no 
fine pictures to which their attention might be 
called. I thought that they might like to see the 
old books. I wondered at their lack of enthusi- 
asm ; but I was told by the domestic monitors that 
they had been exceedingly bored. Then I remem- 
bered that they only said " Yes " and " Oh ! " and 
" How queer ! " They went home, I suppose, to 
read, if they read at all, Miss Watermilk's novels, 
or something else hot from our persistent press. 
So I hardly dare to mention here bigger books than 
the little Elzevirs, of which the aforesaid visitors 
only said, " Oh, dear ! how little ! " But, as it was 
particularly large, they sometimes deigned to look 
at my copy of the "Historia Mundi" of Pliny, 
which was picked up, I think, in Desbrosses Street, 
and was printed by Froben, at Basle, in 1525. But 
all they said of that was, however, " God bless us, 
how old ! " Then I was reduced to the mortifying 
necessity of explaining that it was not particularly 
old, but a specially good piece of printing, and that 
it was in the oricrinal vellum. Then I had to in- 
form them that it was not so well printed as the 
"Tacitus," also by Froben, and printed in 1533. At 
which they said, " Ah ! " But I am not discouraged 
from affirming that I consider the " Tacitus " one of 
the handsomest books which ever came from the 



BOOK COLLECTING. 371 

press I glance at its beautiful pages as I write. 
Could anything be more uniform than the composi- 
tion ? The words are only divided by a sharp 
accent instead of the abominable hyphen which 
disfigures our modern pages. Tire spacing through- 
out is absolutely uniform, with none of those wlute 
zi.^zac's which mar many a fair page of to-day. 
Aldus uses the hyphen constantly, and makes no 
ado of putting three in succession at the end of as 
many lines; but Froben's mark for division is so 
much more elegant, that I am surprised that it lias 
not been adopted in modern printing. I suppose 
that I shall lose all caste as a connoisseur if I say 
that I consider Proben to have been a much better 
printer than Aldus Manutius. Of course, the ques- 
tion is not of tlie least human interest ; but, as I 
am writing this chapter to please myself, having 
^vritten many to please other people, I may be par- 
doned if I draw a comparison. I am not fortunate 
enough to possess any of the great and rarest works 
from the Aldine press; but, comparnig tins little 
copy of Livy, printed by Aldus in 1519, so far as a 
sii all page can be compared with a large one I give 
my hand and heart to Froben. The paper of Aldus 
is a little more elegant. It is laid, and to-day is 
^vhiter. But I am sure that the Roman letter 
.vhich Froben uses is much nobler than the I alic of 
Aldus which strikes me, on the whole, as feeble. I 
l; no't in the least surprised that it has been dis- 
carded. Modern scholars, who like to read the 



372 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

classics in the old editions, which are, of course, the 
most accurate, will get along much more easily with 
the Eoman. So we will put the Aldus Livy upon 
the very top shelf, where the little books belong, 
and I will keep the Froben Tacitus, and, above all, 
the tall Froben Plinius Secundus, in the lower place 
of honor, to which they are entitled. And so enough 
for to-day of the old printers and the old classics. 

The hypercritics may aver that my reminiscences 
have gone back with a vengeance. I make haste to 
say that many of the rarest books are of a compara- 
tively modern date. I could mention several printed 
quite recently which are harder to get now than 
Elzevirs or even Alduses. A friend of mine has for 
a year or two been engaged in picking up original 
editions of the late Mr. Hawthorne's works, and, 
although he has been tolerably, he has not been 
easily successful. A long time pursuing the quest, 
he can now produce a princeios of almost everything 
which Mr. Hawthorne published, including not a 
few magazine articles which have never been col- 
lected. He was proud to exhibit to me his treas- 
ures ; and, as I took a great interest in his progress 
and literary culture, I regarded him fondly in some 
sense as a disciple, and anticipated the day when 
he too would go hunting for Frobens and Maiers 
and Foulises and Baskervilles, and all manner of 
musty books, caviare to the multitude, but much 
better worth looking for than Pioman coins or 
Federal postage-stamps. 



BOOK COLLECTING. 373 

There is something curious about this tendency of 
a book just printed to become scarce. One morn- 
ing when I was walking up Nassau Street, casting 
a sheep's eye at the dingy and dirty stalls, a well- 
know^n bookseller called me across the way, and put 
into my hand the American edition of '' The Book- 
Hunter," edited by that excellent scholar, Mr. Eich- 
ard Grant White, and published in New York in 1863 
— a beautiful piece of printing, from the old Eiver- 
side Press. My bookseller wanted for it a consider- 
able advance upon the former retail price, and, by the 
most astonishing accident, having the money for it 
in my pocket, I bought it. Seventeen years only 
have gone by, and already it is a scarce book, as I 
am sure it is a delightful one. 

Perhaps, if I had foreseen^ how this topic would 
have been so full of suggestions, I should not have 
undertaken its discussion in this limited place. 
There are a hundred anecdotes which introduce 
themselves to the memory; and though I have 
written thus far, I seem to have written nothing. 
The accidents which are the events of a life, into 
which books have entered, are as romantic as tlie 
Chronicles of Froissart. One morning I was list- 
lessly looking over a lot of books which Mr. Dun- 
ham had received from London, and I took up a 
rather shabby copy of the philological treatise called 
" Hermes," written by Harris, and one of the com- 
monest books in the world. It was priced at fifty 
cents. I was struck by the fact that it was full of 



374 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

marginalia; and, looking a little more closely, I 
read, faintly pencilled, ''This was Home Tooke's 
copy, and the annotations are by liim," I went 
with great celerity to Lowndes's "Manual," and 
there I read, under the title of Harris, " Hermes, 
Home Tooke's sale, 316, with MS. notes by H. 
Tooke, £16." My unfortunate friend, the bookseller, 
had marked this volume, as I have said, at fii'ty 
cents. I bought it and paid for it on the spot, when 
I tenderly opened the matter to him, and enjoyed 
just a little his discomfiture ; for it was not only a 
unique, but an extremely valuable book, which had 
been sold for eighty dollars, and bought by me for 
fifty cents. How it ever got to this side I can 
hardly conjecture; I am sure that it must have 
been by accident. 

But strange and rare things come to the collector. 
I have many odd and curious volumes, -some of 
which would not seem so curious to the ordinary 
reader. They are only of value to those who love 
them. Not one man in five thousand would care 
for Edwards's " Canons of Criticism," with Mitford's 
manuscript notes. He would not know who Edwards 
was, though he might find some account of him in 
Boswell's " Life of Johnson " ; and he would not 
know who ^Mitford was, though that commentator 
on Shakespeare has been dead for only a few years. 
I do not know that it makes my copy of Sir Wil- 
liam Davenant more valuable that it has the auto- 
graph of John Wilson Croker on the title-page ; but 



BOOK COLLECTING, 375 

to me it brings back a buridred memories of Mac- 
aiilay, and of the great article which kept, in " The 
Edinburgh Eeview," no terms with Crocker's edition 
of Boswell. But why should I go along with my 
cataloguing ? 

I have spoken in several of these chapters of my 
friends, into whose faces I had often looked, and 
w^hose hands I had often clasped. Here I have 
ventured to speak of these other friends, whose 
voices I have never heard, and who, long before I 
lived, thought and wrote, and in tlieir now dusty 
books asked for the world's sympathy and gratitude. 
"Why should I disdain to own that through every vi- 
cissitude, and when my future seefned at the hardest, 
I had only to go to the shelf of the library and take 
therefrom a book, wdiich would strengthen, encour- 
age, and console me ? Sometimes we read for mere 
amusement ; sometimes, alas ! for dear life itself. 
'T is an aristocracy, this love of books. It makes us 
nobler than those who wrestle for the merely ma- 
terial, and fills our whole life with a superiority 
above that of presidents or millionaires. 



376 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

VALEDICTORY. 

The Fascinations of Journalism. — The Choice of a Pro- 
fession. — Newspaper Work as a Calling. — A Word 
FOR MY Correspondents. — The Men of the Past. — The 
Perpetuity of the Republic. — The Last Greeting. 

THE poets have exhausted the resources of lan- 
guage and of imagination in singing of fare- 
wells. In journalism we do not often suffer ourselves 
to lapse into such sentimentalities. We are like the 
stern old fathers in comedies, who, instead of crying, 
merely turn their heads to an aside and blow tlieir 
noses. We are merged in the columns ; we are like 
the machines for setting type, which all day are rat- 
tling and clattering over my head, grinding out poli- 
tics and news, popular tales and minor paragraphs. 
We are kept necessarily to a certain line of political 
opinion ; we are advocates fighting the battles of our 
betters; we make toys of topics, and taking them 
up in our fingers, twist and shape them, now into a 
comely figure and now into a grotesque, as a sculp- 
tor might manipulate his clay. We bring to the 
work such knowledge as we may have acquired, such 
learning as we have not forgotten, while over the 
daily and nightly drudgery there gleams a lingering 



VALE Die TOR K 377 

halo of the hopes and the ambitions of youth, and 
of those large achievements, folio and quarto, epics 
in prose and epics in verse, which youthful audacity 
conceived, and which the virility of fifty years is 
powerless to execute. 

Yet I suppose that, if I were to choose again, I 
should choose the same career, even witli a long ex- 
l^erience to guide me. Cloistered study is good; 
isolation to certain temperaments is most congenial ; 
the life which has in it the fascination of half active 
indolence, which escapes noisome vulgarity, irritat- 
ing sciolism, and the fuss of adventurous speculation, 
seems the most desirable as we look back. But per- 
haps that is only the instinctive desire for rest, which 
comes to us as the day grows old, just as we think of 
the careless days of childhood, when we had nothing 
to do except to be natural, and to enjoy the unin- 
terrupted felicity of living and learning. We find 
out all too soon that such luxury is incompatible with 
a stalwart life. Our necessities are our monitors. 
The primal curse irritates us into wholesome activ- 
ity, and third-rate men become our exemplars, tell- 
ing us continually that success of the worldly sort 
is the best ; that, life being a game, and we being of 
those who live, it will be much better to sit down 
and handle the cards, and gain something if we do 
not gain much. How is a mere boy to be wise ? 
Sires and grandsires urge him into the heady fight, 
and he rushes forward to win or to be won, to gain 
or to lose ; but always to keep himself in active re- 



378 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

lation to the world and its affairs. He lias no call- 
ing to the clerical profession ; he does not desire to 
dose his fellow-creatures ; the law tempts him not ; 
a purely literary life means beggary : but in journal- 
ism he may be always near human interests, and 
where he may always hear the beating of the great 
human heart. Public affairs seem large to a boy, as 
they sometimes seem small to men. He thinks that 
the city of Washington is one great conscience. He 
supposes that senators have always an invisible 
monitor, like that of Socrates, whispering of integ- 
rity and self-sacrifice and duty in their ears. He 
thinks that representatives must experience almost 
the pangs of parturition before parting with a public 
dollar. He assumes that a man who makes a speech 
which is to be printed must be competent to do so : 
he learns at last that the speech was never made, 
and that it was not worth printing. But this is a 
disillusion which comes afterward. He turns to the 
press as affording the best method of winning his 
bread, as the press makes senators and representa- 
tives. More and more, educated lads adopt this way 
of getting forward ; and if they will only leave be- 
hind them their romantic dreams, and will be con- 
tent to do mucli and to bear much, and to understand 
that the press is only an exponent of the best public 
thought, and has and must have its commercial side, 
they may be sure of meeting their weekly bills, with 
a few shillings left over for unnecessary indulgences. 
But let me not, in making my farewell bow to 



VALEDICTORY. 379 

my Tribune readers, forget how kindly they have 
received my garrulous memories, nor how often 
they have assured me, by letters from all parts of 
the country, that they tolerated my foibles and 
my loquacity. There is a great heap of epistles 
before me as I write, — letters which were meant 
both to cheer and to correct me. One of them has 
come from so far away a place as Paris. Many of 
them have come from a city so impatient of inaccu- 
racy as Boston, — a locality in which nobody was 
ever known to make a mistake. Ex-senators have 
deigned to set me right. All were genially written, 
though the writers were unable to estimate charac- 
ter as I did, or to see events as I saw them. What 
I had to say of Mr. Webster, for instance, was very 
provocative of friendly remonstrance. I never un- 
derstood, and I think that I shall never understand, 
the particular spell which this distinguished man 
exercised over minds which I am constrained to say 
were superior to his own, — I am sure I may say over 
consciences which were more tender. Here is a 
letter which I could not peruse without emotion. 
It came from a pious and learned clergyman of New 
England, who was very good to me when I was a 
boy. What scenes it recalled of the beautiful Eliz- 
abeth Islands, and especially of Naushon, the queen 
of them all ! I heard again the friendly voice ; I 
recalled admonitions which I should have heeded 
better ; I remembered the strolls which we took to- 
gether, as we heard the whisper of the sea upon one 



380 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

side and the whisper of the wood upon the other. 
Alas ! how long ago it seemed. The new books 
w^hich we then talked of have become obsolete ; the 
old ones, perhaps, fresher and fresher ; my mentor 
and myself are both nearer the point at which all 
human guidance will cease : yet, writing here under 
this hot New York sun, I think of those autumnal 
afternoons, of the grave discourse which we had 
upon the shore ; and I pick his letter out from the 
bundle, and I drop upon it a hot tear or two, because 
in it he speaks of my mother, to whom I owe all I 
have worthily been and all I hope to be. 

All lives which extend over half a century are 
worth considering. It would be none the worse for 
men if they were somewhat more in the habit of sit- 
ting down and philosophically regarding their own. 
A young man cares for nothing, because he has be- 
fore him, or thinks that he has, rich opportunities of 
repairing mistakes. An older man has no such con- 
solation. He is what he has made himself The seed 
sown long ago crops out after an interval of many 
summers. But I have not proposed in the course of 
these papers to preach sermons, and I shall not be- 
gin now when they are to be brought to a close. 
The young critics will know more when they get 
older ; the more ancient, I am sure, will put their 
hands in my own as I extend them both for fare- 
well. They, too, have lived, have hoped and been 
disappointed, have suffered and been strong, or oth- 
erwise, as the destinies ordained. As we get assem- 



VALEDICTOR V. 381 

bled upon the muddy shore of the Styx, tumbling 
into the boat of the ferryman, it does no harm if we 
wag our old heads together, and discourse in a friendly 
way of what has gone before. I do not know that 
any life is to be considered an absolute failure. Most 
do something which is not altogether reprehensible 
as they wade through its sloughs, encounter its aus- 
terities, and experience its bereavements. There are 
not so many insolvencies as we think. Is any life, 
after all, worthless ? Has there ever been one into 
which some good did not enter ? But let us not in- 
dulge too closely the scrutiny. He who made us 
surely will not judge us harshly. Shelley says some- 
where that what it was foolish to do it is foolish to 
regret. There is an inordinate gulf of philosophi- 
cal speculation between this conclusion and that 
other one to which we are driven by the usual view 
of human responsibility. It will not be for the 
comfort of any of us if we here too rigidly investi- 
gate the problem. We may laughingly dismiss it 
with the acknowledgment that, though we may from 
bitter experience groan out, " Quod erat demonstran- 
dum," it will alter neither our past nor the future of 
others. It is best, even in this final chapter, to 
concern ourselves with smaller and less disaoreeable 
matters. 

One who has long been in the habit of discussing 
public affairs may fall into a dismal mood because 
wrong and outrage and mistakes still keep pace 
with his increasing years. I desire here to enter 



382 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

my testimony, if it be worth anything, that the 
world moves, and moves for the best. We must 
bridge the phases ; we must make allowance for our 
own short-sightedness ; we must be willing to ac- 
knowledge that reformers are always in a hurry, 
and project themselves too ardently into a possible 
future. I have seen so much of that in my time 
that now, if I had a great suggestion to give to the 
public mind, I fear that I should keep it in my 
pocket for a year, and maybe for five years. I should 
distrust the gaping interim between project and 
performance ; and, fearing mobs, libels, sneers, and 
monthly disappointments, I fancy that I should bid 
the world wait. It would not be wise, but it would 
be natural. 

And yet why should I lapse into this foolish 
reverie ? Maugre all our melancholy discourage- 
ments, the world does move. See how it has moved 
in my time ! I am not in the least sure that men 
do not think more clearly and courageously than 
they once did. I fancy that great moral questions 
are better discussed than they were. Of course I 
have my regretful memories. If I were put to the 
question, I fear that I should be obliged to say that 
public characters do not speak so w^ell as formerly : 
how can I help feeling that? I am not in the 
least afraid of sneers. I may be told that I am 
merely homesick for the old days. Only I know 
better. Has it been for nothing that I read " The 
Congressional Globe " then and now ? Mere speak- 



VALEDICTORY. 383 

iiig, rhetoric, and elocution is not much in itself, 
compared with careful thought and conscientious 
decision ; but one likes to have a great head over 
the ready lips, and to recognize that an oration is 
whole and round. When I first heard Daniel 
Webster speak, the sense of power overcame me. 
How he smote us into conviction by the sweep of 
his stalwart arm 1 There was a school of oratory in 
those days. The people then were worth speaking 
to, because they wished to hear matters discussed, 
and did not propose to vote, upon this side or the 
other, without being convinced. They say that the 
public men now are just as able ; that the oratory is 
just as good ; that it is all nonsense to talk of the 
superiority of past political discussions. Maybe so. 
It is not for me to dispute the assertion. Only up 
there upon the shelf are the speeches of Daniel 
Webster, of Henry Clay, of Calhoun, of so many 
others. Anybody can read them ; not everybody 
can judge them rightly. But, possibly, no good can 
come of comparison. AVe are where we are. Being 
where we are, we must make the best of it. 

Shall I attempt to sum up all that during fifty 
years the world has seen accomplished ? It would 
be more cheerful if the report which one is compelled 
to make of it were a little more encouraging. It lias 
somehow and in some manner made itself. But why 
complain ? Underlying all the speech of men, 
superior to our elections and their results, greater 
even than the newspapers, finer than the orators. 



384 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

stronger than the genius which informs leading 
articles, is the great good sense of the people, which 
I have watched for so long, and have never found 
wanting. How it dominates over all our specula- 
tions I How it leads those who think that they are 
leading! How it suddenly changes the aspect of 
canvasses, and thwarts all the contrivances, however 
subtle, of the convention managers ! This is the 
first republic in the world to be governed by the 
subtile influence of good sense. I have a hundred 
times seen it doomed to perdition. I have myself, 
in moments of despondency, predicted in elevated 
phrases its dissolution. It was going to ruin, pre- 
destinate and inevitable, in the days of General 
Jackson's contest with the United States Bank. 
They told me in my childhood that it came very 
near to destruction about the time of the adoption 
of the Constitution ; and again after the negotiation 
of Jay's treaty; during the contests of the Federal- 
ists and the Democrats ; then when the war of 1812 
destroyed its commerce, and exposed its frontier to 
invasion ; then again when industry seemed par- 
alyzed by the crude notions of the executive about 
currency and banking, which palsied commerce and 
changed industry into idleness ; once more when 
the question of human slavery muddled men's in- 
tellects, depraved their religious notions, made them 
as fearful as children and as unreasonable as ship- 
wrecked voyagers. Eebellion smote at the founda- 
tions of the Government. Many of those who read 



VA L EDIC 7VR Y. 385 

this will rememLer tliat they began to douLt whether 
tliey had a couDtiy at all. Yet to-day wc are 
\vhere we are, with no apprehensions save those 
which have come so often only to he dissipated, and 
with a surety that the sun of the republic will con- 
tinue to rise, equal to tliat which makes us at night 
believe in the next morning. 

If we have faith, w^e have a right to it. Our trust 
in the future is based upon the perpetually recur- 
ring good sense of the people, upon the physical 
advantages of the land, and upon the impossibility 
in this nineteenth century of dooming a continent 
to ignorance, to political inequality, and to that 
succession of mistakes which must end in destruc- 
tion. I do not care how elections are determined. 
I do not care wdiether stocks rise or fall. The 
fuss and the flurry of th«.^- hour may alarm others, 
but it does not alarm me. The incompetence of 
public men may occasion a temporary uneasiness, 
but every rational mind w^ill understand and trust 
in the underlying power and protection of human 
intelligence. 

As I close, I look somewhat tenderly and some- 
what proudly back upon this half century, which 
has so long furnished me with a theme, I hope not 
ungrateful to my readers. I seem to be dissolving 
a tender relation, and to be -wilfully severing the 
cords which connected me with so many kindly 
hearts. But in this world there must be an end of 
all things, and of this series the end has come. I 
25 



386 REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST. 

have felt more than once, as I wrote, how true is 
that sentiment of Martial : — 

" Hoc est 
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui." 

When only a few years remain, if I may paraphrase 
the words of the poet, it brings back our youth to 
recall the early activities, and to prate of the past. 
I do not know that • I shall ever again come into 
such an intimate relation with so many readers. I 
recall a hundred words of kindness and encourage- 
ment. I linger wistfully over the page, asking my- 
self if another sentence or two cannot be added. I 
would fain prolong the parting ; but as the bell 
rings and the curtain is failing, what can I do but 
hold my peace, and retire with a grace more grateful 
than it is possible for me to express ? 



INDEX. 



Abolitionists, 130 ; bigotry of, 
173. 

Actor, a sensitive, 313. 

Adams, Charles Francis, quoted, 
27 ; tis wrath at the assault of 
Brooks upon Charles Sumner, 
84. 

Adams, John, 164. 

Adams, John Quincy, 26 ; charac- 
teristics of, 27, 28 ; his felici- 
tous characterization of the prin- 
ciples of the Democratic party, 
66. 

Adams, Rev. Dr., 170. 

Addic, Mr., 345. 

Allen, Andrew Jackson, anecdote 
of, 193. 

Allen, Judge, 131. 

American literature, the beginning 
of, 348. 

Ames, Samuel, 114.- 

Amusements of fifty years ago, 302. 

Andrew, John A., tribute to, 156. 

Anthony, Burrington, 110. 

Antislavery feelings, 128. 

Ainold, Dr., 99 ; extract from let- 
ter of, 111. 

Astor, John Jacob, 294. 

.Atlas, The Boston, death of, 209. 

Atwell, Samuel Y., 114. 

Author, the, first verses written by, 
12 ; Horace Greeley's tribute 
to, 232. 

Baxckoft, George, character as 
a Democrat, and peculiarities as 
a speaker, 63. 



Banks, Nathaniel P., his political 
historv, 151. 

Barry, Tom, 314, 315. 

Bartlett, Ellis, who he was, and 
other facts concerning him, 52- 
56. 

Bayle, Peter, 91. 

Bennett, James Gordon, 323. 

Bird, Dr., 190. 

Bird, Francis W., characteristics 
of, 155. 

Bloomer dress-reform, 260. 

Bohemianism, 336. 

Book-collecting, fascination of, 
364 ; some old books and their 
peculiarities, 367 kt scq. ; many 
of rarest books of modern date, 
372; interesting incidcntof, 373. 

Book-making, 352, 358; anecdote 
relevant to, 300. 

Books, old, the charm of, 365. 

Booth, the elder, a reminiscence of, 
183 ; anecdotes of, 185. 

Booth, Edwin, 183. 

Boston, conservatism of, in politics, 
86. 

Boswell, 374. 

Bowles, Samuel, 210. 

B.adley, Justice, 100. 

Brewer, Dr., 144. 

liriggs. Gov., 355. 

Brisbane, Mr., 340. 

Brooks, Dr., 99. 

Brooks, Preston S., 160. 

Brown, Dr. John A., his connec- 
tion with free sulFrage in Rhode 
Island, 1U6. 



188 



INDEX. 



BroA\Tison, Orestes A., 41 ; his 
character as a Democrat, 61, 
62. 

Bruce, David, 10. 

Bruce, David W., 10. 

Bryant, William Cullen, 32, 33. 

Buchanan, George, 368. 

Buckingham, Jo'seph T., 197, 329. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 254<. 

Bull, Ole, popularity of, its charac- 
ter, 196. 

Bunker, Capt., 293. 

Burdcll, Dr., murder of, 257. 

Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, mar- 
riage of, 53-55. 

Burke, 224. 

Burlingame, Anson, at time of his 
entrance into public affairs, 148 ; 
his conduct on occasion of 
Brooks's assault upon Sumner, 
149. 

Burnet, 367. 

Burton, Mr., 367. 

Burton, Rev. Warren, 50. 

Butler, Pierce, 275. 

Campaign of 1840, the character 
of, 78. 

Campbell, Tom, 242. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 267, 355; his 
influence upon American letters, 
116. 

Carpenter, Gen. Thomas F., 112; 
anecdotes concerning, 113. 

Carter, Robert, his vast knowledge, 
246. 

Changes which have taken place in 
fifty years, 297. 

Chauning, Rev. Dr., reputation as 
a preacher, to what due, 44 ; 
his essay on slavery, ih. 

Child, Lvdia Maria, her admiration 
for Oie Bull, 197. 

Choate, Rufus, 283 ; as a politi- 
cian, 74 ; as a lawyer and ad- 
vocate, ib. ; anecdote illustrative 
of his astonishing handwriting, 



75 ; anecdote illustrating his 
rapid elocution, 76 ; oratory of, 
ih. 

Choules, Rev. John Overton, char- 
acteristics of, 43. 

Church, Dr. Benjamin, 47. 

Clapp, Henry, 173 ; brief history 
of, 338 ; lesson taught by his 
life, 340. 

Cleveland, John Fitch, his connec- 
tion with the " Tribune," 271. 

Clifford, John H., 60, 69. 

Coffin, Sir Isaac, 338. 

Coggeshail, Capt., 293. 

Coiei-idge, 343. 

Comet,"the, of 1843, 254. 

Congress, the man who wants to 
run for, 311. 

Connery, Mr., 257. 

Coombs, Leslie, anecdote of, 75. 

Corporal punishment, cruelty of, 
51. 

Cafte, Capt. Paul, 1 7. 

Cunimiugs, Mrs., 257. 

Curtis, Benjamin R., 137. 

Curtis, George T., 170. 

Curtis, George William, 280. 

Cashing, Caleb, his connection 
with Tyler's administration, 83 ; 
lack of poj)ularity, and incidents 
of his career, 85. 

Dana, Richard H., the poet, his 
remark concerning Brackett's 
bust of AUston, 140. 

Dana, Richard H., Jr., counsel for 
Simms, 138 ; an incident con- 
cerning, 170. 

Dearborn, George, 263. 

De Quincey, 297. 

Delta- Kappa-Epsilon Society, po- 
em delivered before, in Wash- 
ington, 285. 

Dewey, Rev. Dr. Orville, 36 ; his 
sermons, 37. 

Democrats of Massachusetts, some 
early leading ones and their doc- 



INDEX. 



389 



trincs, 61 ; condition of party 
during- the canvass ol" 1810, CG. 

Dickens, 303. 

Dodge, lion. Angustns Crcsar, 285. 

Dodington, George Biibb, 4. 

Dorr, Thomas Wilson, account of 
liim and his connection with tire 
Rhode Island Rebellion, 108. 

Doi-r Rebellion, the. See Rhode 
Island. 

Douglas, Stephen k., liis wonder- 
ful power, 28G ; reminiscence 
of, 287. 

Douglass, Frederick, 171; his ora- 
tory, 172 ; incident illustrating 
his presence of mind, ib. 

Draft Riot, the, in New York, 248. 

Draper, Mr., 251. 

Drvden, 366. 

Du'lf, Mrs., 182. 

Durfee, Job, 97. 

Editor, disagreeable duties of an, 
328. 

Eliot, Thomas D., 75, 162, 287. 

Elssler, Fanny, reminiscence of, 
194 ; anecdote of, concerning 
Mr. Emerson and Margaret 
Fuller, 196. 

Elton, Rev. Romeo, his character- 
istics, humorous and otherwise, 
96. 

Elwood, Thomas, autobiography 
of, 2. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 33, 116; 
incidents concerning, 34 ; ex- 
pressions concerning Margaret 
Fuller, 118. 

Everett, Alexander H., his learn- 
ing and talent, 73. 

Everett, Edward, 262 ; oratory of, 
70 ; versatility of, 71 ; passage 
from one of his speeches, 72 ; 
concerning Webster, 203. 

Fisher, Clara, 176. 
Ford, Gordon L., 111. 



Forrest, Edwin, criticism of, 190 ; 
anecdotes of, 193. 

Franklin, 329. 

Free-Soil party, formation . of, 
131. 

Fremont, nomination of, an inci- 
dent of the, 154. 

Frieze, Dr., 99. 

Froben compared with Aldus Ma- 
nutius, 371. 

Fry, Elizabeth, quoted, 21. 

Fry, William H., his musical work 
and newspaper writing, 235. 

Fuller, Margaret, her accomplish- 
ments and fascination, 118 ; in- 
appropriately likened to ]\la- 
danie de Stael, 120 ; her fame 
and place in literature, 121. 

Gardner, Henry J., Know- 
Nothing candidate for gover- 
nor, 144 ; how he obtained his 
nomination, 145. 

Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 17. 

Garroting in New York, 256. 

Gaston, William, 99. 

Gates, William F., his excellence 
as a comedian, 177. 

Gilford, William, autobiography 
of, 4. 

Giles, Rev. Henry, anecdote told 
by, 35; his various admirable 
qualities in his different sj)heres, 
123. 

Goldsmith, 350. 

Goodrich, iNIr., 316. 

Greek and Latin, character of their 
value in education, 95. 

Grcclcy, Horace, 206, 317, 324, 
339 ; opinion on Dorr Rebel- 
lion, 111 ; relations with Mar- 
garet Fuller, 119; his identity 
with his newspaper, 216; the 
possessor of two intellectual 
qualities rarely combined, 218; 
intrusions npon his privacy, 
219; anecdote of, 220; his 



390 



INDEX. 



adherence to, and search after, 
truth, 221 ; his dry hmnor, 223 ; 
his desire to prove himself more 
than a mere theorist, 225 ; his 
titness and candidacy for presi- 
dential honors, 226 ; his quick 
literary sense, 229 ; editorial 
methods, 230 ; his memory of 
what pleased him, 231 ; during 
the Draft Riot, 249. 

Green. Albert G., 349; author of 
" Old Grimes," 350. 

Green, Duff, 330. 

Griunell, Hon. Joseph, 354. 

Gurowski, Count Adam, 256; his 
connection with the "Tribune," 
237. 

Hackett, Dr. Horatio B., trib- 
ute to his distinguished abilities 
as a classical teacher, 95. 

Hale, Nathan, 329. 

Hallett, Benjamin F., 31 ; anec- 
dote of, 137. 

Hamblin, Thomas, 178 ; his act- 
ing of Othello, 179. 

Hanscombe, Simon P., an incident 
concerning, 154. 

Harrison, Gen., anecdote of his 
nomination for President, 67 ; 
glorification and idolatry of, in 
campaign of 1840, 79. 

Harvey, Peter, 134. 

Hanghton, Richard, anecdote of, 67. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his ser- 
vices as a Democrat, 61. 

Hazard, Benjamin, 105 ; anecdote 
of, 106. 

Head, Sir Francis, 262. 

Henry, Professor, 288. 

Hildreth, Richard, 67, 269; his 
writiuss, editorial and literary, 
233. 

Hillard, George Stillman, charac- 
ter of, taken as a type of Bos- 
ton conservatism, 168. 

Hillsborough, Lord, 247. 



Illustrations, use of, in print- 
ing, 11. 

Jackson, Andrew, hatred of, in 
Massachusetts, 26 ; anecdote 
concerning his financial policy, 

. 64. 

Johnson, Oliver, 129, 282. 

Journalism, its requirements and 
rewards, 240 ; some of the ex- 
periences of, 308 ; why so few 
men succeed in, 318: training 
required for, 323 ; difl\jrence 
between it and other liberal 
professions, 326 ; scarcity of 
the highest prizes in, 329 ; ad- 
vice to those intending to enter, 
330 ; tendency in literary cir- 
cles to depreciate the dignity 
and value of, 333 ; fascination 
of, 377. 

Journalist, qualities necessary to 
a good, 317 ; feats accomplished 
by a, 318 ; knowledge especially 
necessary to a, 325. 

Juvenile literature, present style 
of, 31. 

Kasson", John A., 75. 

Kean, Charles, anecdote of, 189. 

Kemble, Fanny, her criticism of 
Forrest, 190. 

Kendall, Amos, confidential circu- 
lar-letter issued by, as postmas- 
ter-general under Van Buren, 
66. 

Kettell, Mr., 352. 

Keyser, AVilliam, 197. 

Kimball, Moses, 185. 

Know-Nothing party, organiza- 
tion of, in Massachusetts, ]43; 
nature and duration of its exist- 
ence, 147. 

Kock, Paul de, 264. 

Lamb, Chirles, quoted, 6, 52. 
Lancaster, Joseph, his influence 
upon public-school system, 50. 



INDEX. 



391 



Lallirop, George Van Ness, 100. 

liatiiucr, George, 171- 

Lawrence, Abbott, as minister to 
England, 134 ; anecdote of, 135 ; 
bL-nevolcnce of, 130. 

Lawyers, tlie fame of, 114; anec- 
dote of one, lb. 

Lincoln, Colonel Ezra, 105. 

Lind, Jennv, furore created by, 
198. 

Literary remuneration, changes 
wiiich have occurred during 
iiftv vears, 120. 

Little, Brown, & Co., 240. 

Lockhart's " Life of Scott," anec- 
dote borrowed from, 45. 

LongCellow, Margaret Fuller's un- 
critical remark concerning, in 
"The Dial," 121. 

Lord, Dr. Nathan, tribute to, 
281. 

Lowell, James Russell, 80, 245. 

Luninus, Aaron, 339. 

Lunt, Georu-e, 170. 

Lynch, Miss Annie C, 121. 

]\L\CAULAY, 375. 

;Maffit, Rev. John Ncwland, amus- 
ing and interesting character of, 
40\ 

Maire, 308. 

jNIann, Horace, attitude at time of 
extradition of Sinmis, 140 ; an- 
ecdote of, ih. ; his great services 
to public education, 141. 

Manners of fifty years ago, 304. 

^lartial, quoted, 380. 

:Martineau, Harriet, 40, 358. 

jNlasonry, excitement against, 29. 

Massachusetts, public-school sys- 
tem of, 50 ; opposition of, to 
the Jackson and Van Buren ad- 
ministrations. 59. 

Massachusetts Coalition, the, 158. 

Matthews, Charles, 294. 

!McCutcheon, Mi'., reminiscence 
of, 181. 



Melodrama, the old-fashioned, 180. 

Miller, Joe, 254. 

Miller, Capt. William, 255. 

Ministers, peculiar position of, 
during Antislavery struggle, 282. 

Montaigne, quoted, 52. 

Montai>,u, Lady Mary Wortlcv, 
305^ 

Morrison, Rev. Dr. John II., trib- 
ute to, 40. 

jNIorton, Marcus, his election as 
Democratic governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 69 ; anecdote of, ib. 

Murat, Prince, 294. 

Mustaches, prejudice against, fifty 
years ago, 294. 

Napoleon, 317. 

Negroes, prejudice against, 38 ; 
lazy and shiftless character of, 
in slavery, 284. 

New Bedford, its whaling and 
other characteristics fifty years 
ago, 14. 

Newspaper, the care and attention 
denranded by a, 207 ; true char- 
acter of a, 327 ; the various at- 
tempts to found a comic, 344. 

New York fifty years ago, 292. 

Oratory of fifty years ago, 383. 

Patne, John TIgward, 181. 
Paine, Ro])ert Treat, Jr., 126. 
Parker, Theodore, quoted, 157 ; 

as a preacher and speaker, 206. 
Peabody, Rev. Ephraim, 40, 35S. 
People, the good sense of, as a 

basis of faith, 384. 
Philli])s, Stephen C, 131. 
Phillips. AYendell, oratory of, 59. 
Philcs, Mr., 350. 
Pier])<)nt, Rev. John, his character 

and works, 45. 
Politics, abatement of interest in, 

25. 
Popular literature, fashions in, 202. 



392 



INDEX. 



Presidential elections, one feature 

ot; 213. 
Printers, wliy they often make such. 

good editors, 324. • 

Quakers, their primitive quaint- 
ness and simplicity, 18 ; stories 
of, 19. 

Quincy, Edmund, his letters to the 
" Tribune," 247. 

Quincy, Josiah, 85. 

Eachel, Mademoiselle, 315. 

Reed, John, 355, 356. 

Republican party, matters of in- 
terest concerning its formation 
in Massachusetts, 86. 

Retrospection, the value of, 380. 

Rhode Island, the Dorr War, and 
what led to it, 103 ; the conven- 
tion to frame constitution, 108; 
moral of the Rebellion, 114. 

Rider, Sidney S., & Bros., 112. 

Ripley, George, ability of his liter- 
arv criticism, 238 ; tribute to, 
320. 

Roberts, George, 263. 

Rockwell, Julius, 209. 

Rooker, Thomas N., his long con- 
nection with the "Tribune^'268. 

Russell, Ben, 329. 

Schiller, quoted in regard to 
Madame de Stael, 120. 

Schoeffer, John, 369. 

Scott, Sir Walter, novels of, 32. 

Seward, William H., career of, 
temptations under which it was 
begun, 164 ; anecdote of, at time 
of his Plymouth oration, 165 ; 
estimate of his character, 167. 

Shanly, Charles Dawson, 345. 

Shaw, Chief Justice, 74, 138. 

Sheridan, 243. 

Simms, extradition of, 138. 

Slaverv, question of the abolition 
of, 290. 



Sloman, Mrs., a reminiscence of, 
182. 

Snelling, William J., 352. 

Sohier, Edward, 137- 

Specimen Book, the, 10. 

Stage-coach travelling, 300. 

Statesman, a sensitive, 278. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, remi- 
niscences of, 274. 

Stevens, Mr., proprietor of " Van- 
ity Fair," 345. 

Stone, Dr., 76. 

Stone, John Augustus, 191. 

Sue, Eugene, 263. 

Sumner, Charles, 138 ; entrance 
into public life, 159 ; character 
as a public man, 160 ; anecdote 
illustrative of, 163 ; Brooks's 
assault upon, 252. 

Swift, 318. 

Talfourd, Justice, 189. 

Taylor, Bayard, his travels, 241 ; 
anecdote illustrating his literary 
taste, 243 ; his editorial work, 
244 ; his death, 245. 

Temperance, now and fifty years 
ago, 296. 

Texas, annexation of, 80. 

Thackeray, 274, 343. 

Thayer, Gen. John Milton, 99. 

Thompson, George, 129. 

Thompson, Mortimer, 275. 

Transcendentalism, 116. 

Tree, Ellen, a reminiscence of, 
188. 

Turner, Sharon, the execrable 
manuscript of his " Sacred His- 
tory," 269. 

Tyler, President, anecdote of, 80 ; 
administration of, 81. 

Ullman, Hon. Daniel, 258. 
Upham, Hon. Charles W., 152. 

Van Burkn, John, his Antislavery 
principles, 133. 



INDEX. 



393 



Vicnxtcmps, M., 197. 
Voltaire, 309. 

Warren, Charles Henry, anec- 
dote told by, 58. 

AVashbiuu, Emory, defeat by Know- 
Nolhiiigs, 144. 

Waylaud, Dr. Francis, 175 ; char- 
acter as a college president, 92 ; 
anecdote of, 94. 

Webster, Daniel, 56, 379, 383; 
anecdote of, 57 ; a reported say- 
ing of, GO ; anecdote of, con- 
cerning the presidential cam- 
paign of 1840, 67 ; disastrous 
consequences of his retention of 
oflice under Tyler's administra- 
tion, 81 ; disappointment of, at 
nomination of Gen. Taylor, 134 ; 
death of, 201 ; anecdotes of, 
204; character of, 205. 

Webster, Fletcher, peculiarities of 
his character and conduct, 83. 

Weiss, John, tribute to, 42. 

Wells, Judge, 139. 

West, Rev. Samuel, facts concern- 
ing him and his character, 47. 

Whigs of ]Massachusetts, their pe- 
culiar claims to respectability, 
60 ; condition of the party pre- 
vious to 1840, 65 ; dissolution 
of party, 142. 



Whipple, Edwin P., remark of, 
concerning Dr. Choules, 44. 

Whipple, Johu, 114. 

White, Richard Grant, 373. 

Whitehead, Johu, quoted, 2. 

Whitnuin, Mrs. Saiah Helen, 176 ; 
her various qualities as a writer 
and person, 122 ; her betrothal 
to Poe, ib. 

Wilkins, a reminiscence of, 341. 

Willis, N. P., 127, 195, 350, 354 ; 
as a join'ualist, 357. 

Wilson, Henry, his first entrance 
into public life, 70; his atti- 
tude and importance at the time 
of the formation of the Repub- 
lican party, 87 ; his connection 
with the Free Soil party, 132 ; 
quotation from his " History," 
133; his election to Senate by 
Know-Nothing partv, 146. 

Winter, William, 174.' 

Winthrop, Robert C, his co-op- 
eration desired in formation of 
Republican party, 88 ; concern- 
ing him and the indignation 
meeting at time of assault on 
Sumner, 89. 

Wood, John, Mr. and Mrs., 
314. 

Wright, Elizur, Jr., 153. 



University Press : John M'ilson & Son, Cambridge. 



